I was having a conversation with my co-worker today about how I just started using Twitter and really like it. She's been an avid tweeter for years and began to describe her relationship with it. She explained how comfortable she is communicating in the Twitter platform and having a bunch of strangers follow her, but when a stranger tries to follow or friend her in other social networks (like Facebook or Google+) it somehow crosses a boundary and makes her uncomfortable. This was very enlightening for me, because I feel the same way! Just yesterday I had two people I didn't know start following me on Twitter and I immediately investigated my new followers with a sense of excited curiosity. That has never happened on Facebook. Whenever a stranger tried to be my friend I would immediately become guarded and skeptically investigate their profile for any similarities or reason to reciprocate (and I'm usually doing this with a very smug look on my face).

This really revved up my curiosity. Twitter has managed to seamlessly bridge the two types of social networks that I assumed were always disparate, (1) personal networks where you connect with people who you already know and (2) interest driven networks where you connect with strangers. The underlying assumptions being: it's taboo to friend a bunch of strangers in your personal network, like Facebook, and it is uncanny to friend a bunch of real-life friends in your interest-driven network, like Second Life (excluding job related uses, of course). But nobody thinks twice about actively seeking a bunch of strangers to follow in Twitter one moment and directing tweets at your friends the next. This just amazes me.

I've spent a lot of time parsing apart how the design of sites like Facebook and Second Life facilitate the behaviors that reflect their key demographic. So, what I want to know is: how does Twitter's design encourage this social bridge? By comparing it to Facebook and Second Life I hope to understand how it manages to survive in this "no man's land."

:: The Dissection

The big difference between Facebook and Second Life is the level of anonymity encouraged by the interfaces. Facebook is designed to have the real you conveyed, while-in stark contrast-Second Life has you assume the identity of an avatar. The last time I was on the site you could only access real information about the person behind the avatar from the very last tab in the profile-and even then it was usually blank or contained some common variation of "I use second life to get away from my real life, so don't ask." So, where does Twitter fall in this spectrum? It tries to make your twitter-handle some variation of your name, so it's moving you towards conveying your real-self, but after signing up you're immediately prompted to follow strangers. What I found interesting about this approach is how Twitter "verifies" accounts (indicated by a check mark icon) to overcome fears of authenticity or stranger-danger.

Although Twitter has a profile, they never actually hold your hand to walk you through it. So there is this balancing act between 'yeah, be yourself' with 'okay, we don't really care.' Maybe since Facebook prompts you to outline every detail of your life before you even see the homepage this preempts you to approach the space more personal and sacred. If I wanted to make my personal information available to the public on Twitter I would have to actively seek out ways of doing it, and even then there is always a length restriction. 140 for tweets and they'll give you 20 more characters to describe yourself in the bio.

Once you're adjusted and using the site, it's interesting to notice what the buttons in the navigation bar suggest. Twitter emphasizes ways to reach out to people in the community via the search bar, 'Home' page, or 'Who To Follow' links. Meanwhile, the Facebook interface tells a different story. They put you in the center of your social world with a notification hub for alerts that relate to you, a search bar that automatically skews the results towards your network, and your profile link. So, the navigation bar is another place to assume that Facebook centralizes 'the self' while Twitter centralizes 'the other.' Appropriately, Second Life's navigation bar is filled with immersive chatting features; If I can say a joke and then make my avatar do a coinciding gesture I've just helped you take one step further into our little world. But Twitter doesn't facilitate chat, per se, you are either getting publicly mentioned or privately messaged. It has an acute ability of letting you be a social voyeur-or connecting from a safe distance-because let's face it, chats are personal.

I really admire how Twitter has balanced its design between personal and interest driven social networks. By not quite centering on the self and creating channels of communication with a percieved "safe distance," participants don't create boundaries too personal for strangers. I haven't used the interface long enough to have insights on tweeting, as compared to status updates, as compared to...but maybe in the near-future. [To be continued??]

Originally posted at: http://socialsocial.wordpress.com/