Taylor Swift, 20 years old American country-pop singer: first thing you fall on when you look for "SWIFT" on FB

The so-called SWIFT agreement was not only a kind of miracle that made it possible to watch EPLive with a lot of emotion, passion and tension. It was also, for me, the occasion to better understand Twitter, on which I thought as Kurt (post of 9 Feb) before.

There are hundreds and hundreds of tweets on this subject, marked by the ash tag #SWIFT. Before the vote – with the goal of informing, lobbying and campaigning – during the vote and after the vote. I wanted to count them, but I gave up (does anybody know if there is an automatic way to count the Twitters?!). I preferred to try to understand why so many.

My very rudimentary conclusions follow. Excuse me for the comparison with Facebook, it’s due to the familiarity.

1 – Welcome to the geeks paradise! Twitter is for the experts. The #SWIFT votes were twitted by MEPs, bloggers, journalists, political groups etc.

2 – Bit.ly/tr.im2ç or the essentiality of Twitter: confirming that it’s not “to have fun”, but more to get, give and circulate information, in Twitter you don’t get lost in photos, links, applications. It’s only short text and – not by chance - every day more and more bit.ly and other short links.

3 – And if we tweeted…from the toilet? I was impressed seeing that some MEPs were twittering from the hemicycle. Ok, this is possible from Facebook as well, but I’ve the impression that with Twitter is quicker and more connected to the “right people”. Maybe on Twitter she had loyal followers, waiting for her to tweet, the #SWIFT geeks let’s say. Basically, on Twitter you’re not necessarily a friend or connected to that person, but you’re interested in the topic, and you’re not bothered if you receive 5 updates on the same subject from the same person in 15 minutes.

4 - @ RT # = bla bla bla – I saw the lack of interactivity as the main limit of Twitter. Now I understand that it simply works differently. You don’t post on the others’ wall (that – in this way – stays clear and readable) but trough RT (retweets, event multiple), @ (questions/answers, see the one between Marjorie and Julien on 11 February at 5:00 PM) and # (establishing a subject). Once again, it’s not immediate, but once you’re in the circle, it’s very quick and interactive. Europarl_EN has been widely retweeted in this occasion, because we gave the relevant information timely. Also Parliament’s president Jerzy Buzek was retweeted – even if its statement came later – because it was meaningful.

5 - Whatever you want to sell, be there – Twitter is really a promotional platform. Most of the Tweets are made to draw people’s attention to some other pages, or more detailed analysis. But the advantage is, you don’t need to follow the link if you don’t want to know more.

6 – ASH! # is a useful tag to search the good information, at least in the peak-period for a certain topic. If you look for SWIFT on Facebook, what you get first is Taylor Swift, a 20 years old country singer with over 3 Million fans. Only scrolling down to ”posts by friends” you get something relevant and connected to “our” Swift. In Twitter you need to scroll down by date (this is another differences, Facebook relevance is based on numbers of fans/friends, whereas in Twitter – as any news room - what counts is the date. A “search by date” function would be very useful). If you put a double search criteria, #SWIFT and #EP, the research refines even further, proving that who’s part of the conversation is also part of the game (#EP is really internal jargon).

Facebook is more like a wedding were you know everybody. Twitter is more like one of those receptions in the Parliament where you feel a bit uncomfortable.

All the above characteristics make Twitter a very powerful campaigning tool. MEPs, bloggers and activists kept each other posted and active (like Julien Frisch: “Raise your voice against #SWIFT at the EP page on Facebook: http://tr.im/Nf9V“). Facebook is often linked from Twitter, as a proof that the two platforms are not in a competition because they have good complementarities. Facebook itself was a campaigning tool in during the SWIFT case. By the way, in this page it’s very interesting to see how people created and spread lobbying tools and organised action against SWIFT trough the social media (but this would deserve another post).

Like the Parliament, most of the frequent internet users use both platforms to reach a broader public and speak with different codes to different interlocutors. We are already quite good on Facebook, I’m sure we will make many progresses on Twitter soon!

In conclusion, to describe the differences and similarities between Twitter and Facebook I liked the party metaphor. Facebook is more like a wedding were you know everybody and you feel happy to meet old school friends and new ones. Twitter is more like one of those receptions in the Parliament were you feel a bit uncomfortable in the beginning. You don’t know almost anybody and you need to start a conversation, normally on work-related topics, with faces that you only know by corridor-contact. But, like in life, the borders between one sphere and the other are not so rigid and they will evolve with the time. So…eyes open and ready to surf the next wave!