Michael Arrington on Twitter

Michael Arrington gave me this plug earlier today.  Not bad to have a rave review like that for the internet resume.  Everyone listen to Arrington, he knows what is going on in the tech and startup world.  His comment gave me 20 new followers within about 5 minutes, kinda fun.  Now I need to make sure I’m updating my blog and twittering the most amazing 140 character messages there are.

You know where you can find me on twitter if you’re on there already.

• 30 seconds- Time it takes for a typical email to be sent to someone I know.

• 2 seconds- Time it takes for Twitter to update my tweets and send them out.

• 1 second- Time it takes to send an IM

• 1 WEEK!- Time it takes for facebook to tell me that someone wrote on my wall.

This is ridiculous and it seems like it should be a major concern for facebook and the people who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars. As others have notices, the instantanious connection that twitter provides should really make facebook consider how they are doing things on their site. Yes, they provide a much larger news feed of what your friends are doing, but if the news is on pace with a weekly magazine, how relevant is it in the world we live in today?

It sounds like facebook will be launching an on site IM service on Monday which will allow people to chat with other people who are online. This will be a nice service, but I am surprised that it is so far up on the priority list for Mark Zuckerberg and Co. With so many people already on AIM, MSN, GChat, and the many other services that work with eachother and can be used without being logged onto a specific site I don’t see facebook’s service taking off that quickly. Yes, it will work. Yes, I’ll probably use it a few times. But no, it won’t make me stay logged into facebook all day long.

What facebook should be doing is working on speeding up their news feed as well as how quickly they notify you of new messages and wall posts. I don’t live on facebook because there isn’t enough of a stream of new information being sent through my news feed. When someone writes on my wall, if I don’t find out about it for a week then the chances of that message being relevant in todays world of connectivity are very very slim.

Facebook needs to stay on top of the game if they wanto ever cash in on their $15B valuation.

However, over the last few weeks I have come to realize that twitter is not only a powerful tool for communicating online and via your cell phone, but that it is also a much better way of getting you casually connected with alot of people who you would not meet or become friends with on facebook. Most of the people who I “follow” on Twitter, I have never met in person, and would not consider them my friends. I follow Ben Bernanke, Jim Cramer, Guy Kawasaki, and that is just a few of the people I follow that I otherwise would have no “access” to in the real world, or even meaningful contact with on Facebook.

The reason that I am now enjoying twitter is that I have started to follow people who are smarter and more connected than I am, as well as the few actual friends I do have on twitter. I now get interesting articles sent my way, keep in the know about web/tech happenings, and get to see what some of the smartest most succesful people in the tech industry are working on and thinking about. I don’t follow anybody that starts following me and this helps keep my feed down to a managable ammount of information that I consistantly find interesting.

If you’re on twitter, or join, let me know!

After the jump a good video by Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the guys who I am really enjoying following on twitter, on why facebook needs to adapt or get passed by twitter. A good take, and if you head over to his site check out his other videos there is some good stuff in there.