twitter != facebook status

I mentioned yesterday that I’ve never been very inclined to send the same status messages to every online service I’m registered for (twitter, facebook, pownce, plurk, etc.). My reasoning for not doing this is that each of these services has a different expectation attached to the status message incorporated within it.  A while ago I had an interaction with a then-acquaintance that highlighted this issue of expectation very clearly.
I was hanging out with a bunch of friends at the house back in Boston and walked up to say hi to a girl I knew, and not to be rude I greeted her friend (a girl I had met briefly before but not spoken to at great length) as well.  Now as I just mentioned I didn’t know the second girl that well but I knew her well enough to recognize her, know her name, hold a conversation with her, and most importantly, already have established facebook friendship with her (sending my activity in her news feed).

Quickly the second girl recognized me. This recognition came in the form of “You’re the guy who updates his facebook status all the time”  (read: “you’re the weird who changes your facebook status <strong>wayyyyyyy</strong> too much”).  At that moment I had a realization.  The reason she had commented on my over-updated status was because I had a facebook application installed to send my twitter staus updates to my facebook status.  I was clearly aware that this was happening but I had overlooked the notion that the established status updating behavior of twitter was not the commonly accepted behavior on facebook.  I had now become the creepy guy that spends way too much time on facebook (I do) and updates his status so much something has to be wrong with him (something is).

This issue arose because of differences in the principal value of each service.  Twitter is about status updates, your updates, friends’ updates, just updates.  On twitter connections are important but secondary, because without status updates connections on twitter serve no purpose.  When you evaluate the principal value of Facebook, connections are the priority, status is simply a small side-capability.  Think back to the beginnings of facebook, status updates didn’t even exist.  To any established facebook user status was not a motivating factor in joining the site, and for that reason established users don’t utilize it as a primary function of the site.  I don’t find it surprising that as an introduced feature, facebook status has taken a time to find a foothold among users.  As time passes and facebook’s user base grows more users will start their facebook experience with status updates, and expected behavior will come to include more frequent update of status.  For now though, updating my status fequently gives me cool points, while updating my status that much on facebook just makes me “that guy” (and I don’t mean in a good way).