About Books, Facebook & Tweets

At this point, I'm not sure about what is going to be what books were for the last 3.000 years. In other words, what kind of "new media" is really going to assume the importance the book had until now, or at least before the internet explosion.

I mean, TV is still the widest abrangence, and a very effective mass control tool, but the REAL discussions never were there. The real discussions remained first at a very personal level, since collective becoming written as articles or books, and always naturally restricted to the interested parts.

Internet is kind different. It is, at the same time, the chat (in the personal talk sense), the book & the mass control tool. Where you are right now in this context depends on what you do with your time in front of an access terminal (notebook, tablet, smartphone etc). OK, I agree Internet is much more than this, but let me explore this aspect.

Facebook is a natural step on the technological evolution, where personal relationships are converging to bits, to stored data. Just this. I like thinking of it as an attempt to recriate virtually the relationships the people have each other in the real word. It works like a trap: come here to meet your friends, let me make value (money) with your personnal data.

I mean, Facebook is very very far from being the "ultimate social networking platform". It fails on filtering what is really important to the user, flooding you with tons of trash. As it is extremely "over", seems natural that people will become bored and just leave it, as they did at Orkut. Most of them will never realize that it is possible to set some filters. Above all, the real discussions aren't there.

Twitter is far more simple, and much more refined. It brings much less information, works more like an index. The central idea is not add friends, but to follow who you consider interesting in some sense. This has more chances to present you relevant information, that can be anywhere on the internet. Occasionally someone can consider you an interesting soul to listen to also.

Facebook and Twitter have completely different approaches on social networking. Facebook is draining all the personal data of the users, to lock in their servers. Twitter builds a network of instant relevant content.

The real discussions remain personal, splashing on tweets. Or do you thing it is easy to introduce something relevant in 140 characters?