Why I Love Twitter (Right Now) More than Facebook

No, no, it's not what you think. I'm not going to complain about the redesign of FB and how it has ruined it forever. That's sweating the small stuff. The real problem is, I feel bad about my neck. Maybe not as bad as Nora Ephron does, but bad enough. I'm not thrilled with my graying hair, wrinkles, and the extra ten pounds or so that have found their way mostly to my intractably and decidedly un-flat stomach. Which is why, for me, logging on to my beloved facebook account to catch up on friends and spy on my 16 year old daughter has become a bittersweet venture.

Facebook was a dream until, within hours of my first entering my date of birth on my profile page, through the magic of e-sleuthing, the ads began to appear. And the cognitive dissonance began: logging in to see the number of friends increasing -- good; logging in and seeing the number of self-improvement ads increasing -- bad. Just like that, the e-marketers were fast at work. They knew about all of my foibles. They wanted to help. They offered many solutions: I could become unwrinkled like the stars (murdering my wrinkles, in fact, how un-PC), achieve that elusive flat stomach in 30 days, and lose weight like Oprah by eating exotic berries imported from Brazil. Hey, if I wanted to be reminded about this stuff all day, I would just look in the mirror.

No good could come of this. OK, maybe I burned a couple of calories as my emotions competed strenuously between the extremes of the sheer happiness of procrastinating real work by sleuthing for some FB gossip, and of the utter depression from scanning ads for the litany of body parts I could feel bad about and what to do to fix them. But, I don't want to burn calories that badly, and anyway, I have a plan for my imperfections -- it's free, and freeing -- it's called acceptance (or denial, I like to mix it up).

Then one day I wandered over to Twitter. And against all odds and diminishing brain cells, as a forty-something year old, I got how it works. If you join, I promise, within days that light blue whale icon will be your new best friend, you'll get it too. But what you won't get, right now anyway, is depressed. You see, as of today, there are no ads on Twitter.

Yes, one could argue that each tweet is an ad for yourself, but that's not going to send anyone running to a gym or a shrink's couch. You control what you see. You follow the "tweets": personal sound bites documenting the newsworthy or not so newsworthy moments of the people you are interested in -- from your cousin in Bethesda to President Obama, to a homeschooling mom in Detroit. And people follow you. If you don't want people to follow you, you block them. It's simple, no harm, no foul. But, best of all: no ads. You do not log in to your account and suddenly morph into a broken person in need of botox and glue. Nirvana, for now.

But I think all that is about to change. From a news item I saw (yes, on Twitter), incoming CEO for AOL, Tim Armstrong (of Google ad fame), wants to buy Twitter. So, the same cyber detectives who have spied on me on facebook and have oppressed me with solutions to all of my problems will no doubt be deployed to the new Twitter and Nirvana will become a writ-small version of the invasive infomercials that plague late night television.

Fear not, fellow twits. I have a plan. When Twitter goes corporate, let's work together. How about all seven million of us, and counting, start a facebook group called, "Bring Back the Old Twitter," in protest? Just kidding. But really, what if we moved en masse to the next start up social networking site that hasn't been so successful yet that someone has to buy it up and pay for it with commercials? Someone's got to be cooking that up in their basement as we speak. It's kind of like we're squatters getting kicked out of our digs and resourcefully crashing elsewhere. The way I figure, we can keep doing this cyber shell game forever.

This way we can maintain the idyllic community that is twitter -- sharing big ideas and tinyurls -- free from the perils of advertising. So, though when the takeover happens it may be a bittertweet (sorry, someone had to say it) goodbye, let's follow each other to whatever network comes after...that's where you'll find me, happily. I'll be the one with wrinkles.

Comments

[deckard70]

Just use AdBlock on Firefox, for all your web surfing.

[ndem]

We should buy Twitter as a cooperative user-owned venture!!!! I love it no ad-wise...­find a new way to keep it going!!!! Was NEVER into Facebook but LOVE Twitter!!!! It is how the internet USED to be back in the beginning (before most Facebook users were born!!!!)

[SeanGardner]

Hey Tamar...di­d hear about the Twitter Cruise? Here is the link: http://twitterbythesea.com/.

[Tamar Chansky - Huffpost Blogger]

thanks Sean, I hadn't heard about the cruise,looks really great. Never been on a cruise-- they have internet don't they? : )

[marcylauren]

I love twitter!

[LoRiseAntlers]

It amazes me how many people are willing to knowingly download spyware,which is all Facebook and Twitter is.