I've been using Seesmic's Adobe Air Facebook application for a few days now. Despite all of it's inadequacies (see below), it raises a larger question to me - and one that I have written about before:
Is there room for both Twitter and Facebook feeds?
Both on the consumption and creation side - navigating between both is a pain.
If a user has to choose between the two, which would it be?
This is where I struggle the most: as a consumer of content, Facebook's stream is more interesting and 'valuable' to me. It is more relevant, less noisy and generally less promotional. Hence why I have converted to the Seesmic client (again, despite it's inadequacies). As a marketer (in other words, a producer of content), Twitter has the larger reach (because it is open rather than closed) and consequently a more effective promotional lever. But again, navigating between both communities is troublesome.
These questions arose as my desktop real estate (and more importantly... my time) were looking at Twhirl, Tweetdeck and now Seesmic for Facebook. And, at least for now, I have opted to use Seesmic because I still find Twitter to be too noisy and too cluttered to make the experience both relevant and efficient. But it is not without it's limitations:
- First, it is really a glorified sized-browser of my Facebook feed
- There is no ability to post, reply, navigate, etc... it is purely for reading
- There is no customization other than window size
- Ideally, you could post to Facebook and have it also post to Twitter (which would solve 90% of my complaints). Twitter currently allows the opposite flow...
- Finally, I am confused how this fits in with Seesmic and, if it doesn't, why it is branded as such ("Seesmic for Facebook")
By the way: if you do not already, I recommend following Jon Steinberg (@jonsteinberg) and Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) on Twitter.