Apr 28 2009

Is Twitter the end of Facebook?

Well, is it? Personally, I’m not even sure that the two should be compared.

Facebook is an amazing social network, but does anyone actually use it as a networking tool? It consists of hundreds if not thousands of friend circles, where you can view photo’s, video’s and chat. But if you’re not in a friend circle, you don’t have much chance of really engaging with anyone in it.

Twitter, however, pulls down these social cliques, and lets you engage with complete strangers. Sharing links, stories and advice like old pals, and, if you wish, letting people know about every intricy of your life, from what you had for lunch to your latest bowel movement.

They are two completely different beasts. One, Facebook, is a completely self contained little universe, where just like life, you know who and what you like, and they’re the only things that you need to worry about. Twitter is a much more open, free universe, where ideas and links can spread like wildfire.

This is why, surely, Twitter is much more of a powerful marketing tool than Facebook can ever be. Seeing how quick some links are ‘ReTweeted’ around is pretty insane sometimes. In comparison, have you tried really reaching a target market on Facebook without a massive marketing budget? If you’re not a known brand-name, you’ll never get a look in.

Get it right, and Twitter could be much more efficient as a marketing tool, just don’t get it wrong like Skittles did.


Apr 23 2009

Unglamorous PHP?

A conversation with Stef got me thinking. Why is PHP so…..boring?

There is obviously a lot of people that are really into developing in PHP, myself included, but it just doesn’t have the same wow factor that Javascript has, for instance. Nearly every PHP tutorial I can find includes javascript in an effort to make it more exciting.

I’ll agree that javascript has helped PHP development massively with the use of AJAX, but surely something that makes the world go round shouldn’t have to rely on something ’shiny’ to get people interested in it?


Apr 23 2009

First post etc

Well, I better do the whole ‘First post’ thing. After working on and with blogs for the last few years, and spending the vast majority of my life infront of some kind of screen, I decided it was time I started my own proper blog, if only to provide a place to vent random frustrations throughout the day.

Hopefully something useful will be written at somepoint though. Thanks to evaneckard.com for the theme.