the klog

Here's something that kinda baffles me: Two of the most popular new conversation media are Twitter and Facebook Walls. They both have this odd property of semi-public conversations when the social graph is not fully-connected. Here's what I mean:

In Twitter, you can "follow" a friend and receive their Twitter posts. Twitter was originally designed for "broadcast" posts, essentially acting as a miniblog. You say something, and all your friends see it on their cell phones.

Soon, people developed "@ notation" to direct attention to a particular person, but the message is still broadcast to all your friends. This sequence might result:

Amy: I just had a sandwich.
Bob: This paper is taking forever to write.
Bob: @Amy: How was it?
Amy: @Bob: Pretty tasty. Finish your paper yet?
Bob: @Amy: Get me one next time. And yup. Finally done!
Amy: @Bob: Sure thing!

So far so good. If someone were friends with both Amy and Bob, the above is what they would see. Now let's say Bob has a friend called Chris, but Chris is not a friend of Amy. Here's what Chris would see on her cell phone:

Bob: This paper is taking forever to write.
Bob: @Amy: How was it?
Bob: @Amy: Get me one next time. And yup. Finally done!

It's like listening to half a phone conversation. Kinda weird. I guess this works well enough if you have a well-connected social graph, so that you're basically having a group chat, but people on the edges of your group will be confused.

Odder still, Facebook Wall posts are the exact opposite! With Twitter, you only see your friend's half of the conversation. With Facebook Wall, you only miss your friend's half! In the example above, Chris would see Bob set his Facebook status to:

Bob is taking forever to write this paper.

Then she would see the following on Bob's Wall:

Amy: Pretty tasty. Finish your paper yet?
Amy: Sure thing!

Again, if you're friends with both people, Facebook even provides a handy "Wall-to-Wall" view to follow the thread of conversation. But otherwise, you'll see lots of these half-conversations on your friend's Wall. I don't know the early history of Facebook, but I'm guessing Walls were originally meant to represent whiteboards on dormroom doors, and this Wall-to-Wall thing evolved from user behavior just like Twitter's @ notation.

And herein lies what baffles me: We have two models of conversation here that achieve precisely opposite results, but they are equally popular. Kenneth is confused. That's all!