Different social networks for different purposes

Soren Gordhamer at Mashable has a good reminder of the dif­fer­ing pur­poses and uses of social net­works — in this case, Facebook vs. Twitter:

There is grow­ing body of peo­ple who actively use more than one social net­work, and do so with quite dif­fer­ent pur­poses. Though on the sur­face many social net­works seem sim­i­lar, to use them skill­fully it helps to bet­ter under­stand the dif­fer­ent roles they can play in one’s online activity.

via When Do You Use Twitter Versus Facebook?

A quick summary:

• Twitter for con­nect­ing with some­one you don’t know.
• Twitter for break­ing news.
• Discovery and new learn­ing on Twitter.
• Facebook for local news and events.
• Facebook for con­nect­ing with some­one you know.
• Looking for help on an issue? Soren prefers Facebook.

The Mashable tips are use­ful, although leave off other social net­works, par­tic­u­larly Linkedin. Nonetheless, they are use­ful tips. Here are my additions:

• Linkedin for pro­fes­sional net­work­ing, as long as I’ve inter­acted with the per­son previously.
• Facebook for per­sonal net­work­ing — and pro­fes­sional con­tacts I would con­sider closer than acquantances
• Twitter for broad-​​based net­work­ing with those I may or may not have met, but want to keep up with
• Friendfeed as a sup­ple­ment to Twitter

The more you mix pro­fes­sional and per­sonal con­tacts, the more care­ful you need to be with your posts. So while I do add pro­fes­sional con­tacts to Facebook on occa­sion, I always remem­ber they may see my sta­tus updates, and post accord­ingly — but remem­ber­ing, too, that Facebook is per­sonal in tone, while Linkedin is pro­fes­sional. (Twitter is some­where in the mid­dle). And I always use Facebook groups to seg­re­gate types of connections.

Finally, I always try to remem­ber that, regard­less of seg­re­ga­tion, any of my online posts could be read by any­one. So I make sure to mod­er­ate my post­ings, just in case.