“Twitter is like a calling card. Facebook is like a phone call. Blogging is like a full-fledged conversation!”

This week in Blogging Insights Dr Tanya asks us to discuss the above quotation. I think it’s quite a good analogy. Twitter is severely limited by the number of characters you are allowed to have. I don’t think you can have a meaningful conversation via Twitter with those rules. A calling card is not a bad description of what it is like.

I was on Twitter briefly several years ago but I decided that I didn’t like it. Too much rubbish on it. I think if you have something important to say it ought not be condensed down to a one liner. It’s too easily misinterpreted. Besides I am not interested in following celebrities or anything like that.

I am on Facebook. Family use it and friends back in the Huon Valley so I can check in with them from time to time. In that sense I guess it is a bit like a phone call. It’s a bit like a community noticeboard for me too as I check out local groups for events and to get recommendations for tradespeople etc. I also check in to special interest groups like doll collectors. I keep my interactions of FB very general though. If I have something personal to say I’ll use a private message. I often see discussions on the local boards that get quite personal and even rude although the moderators mostly do a good job of shutting that kind of thing down. I try not to engage with all that.

WordPress though, that’s different. I do call it social media but I’m doubtful about whether that’s what it actually is. Maybe blogging is more like taking part in a forum. Let’s forget the business bloggers and so called influencers because they probably do use WP more like they use their other social media. Let’s just talk about the hobby blogger community because it is a real community. Most of us follow quite a few blogs, even if we don’t always get time to read every post. Most of us try to leave a comment when we do read one and sometimes an interesting post will spark quite a long comment thread and even inspire other posts on the same subject. To me that does feel like a conversation.

So, yes, I think this is quite a good quote although I also liked Fandango’s version which compared Twitter to fast food, Facebook to a local café or diner and WordPress to fine dining. I would have said WordPress was like a good home-cooked meal but the meaning is the same.