Most of you know I'm an avid user of Facebook and Twitter. I've been active on Facebook for a few years, and on Twitter for just about a year. I consider both of them important parts of my online life, though originally, for different reasons. Now I find the two are merging for me.

From the beginning, Facebook was a place for me to keep in touch with new and old friends, and I've really enjoyed it. For the most part, I only "friended" people I knew and though sometimes that meant a person I only had the vaguest memory of from high school, it was important for me to keep it free from "clutter" by only accepting requests from people I had some familiarity with.

Twitter, on the other hand, began as a place where I created new relationships, mainly publishing and writing-related. It's worked beautifully–I've made so many new friends, acquaintances, and contacts, and I've learned so much about the industry. I've said this before, and I'll say it again–if you are in any sort of field where self-promotion and contacts are important, you gotta be on Twitter. Learn to use it and use it well, because it is your friend.

Because of the different uses I had for Facebook and Twitter, I expressed myself differently on each. On Facebook I tended to post more personal, random things, because the people there knew me. On Twitter, I tried to keep it more professional, sticking mostly to writing links and sharing information. 

But after a year of creating relationships on Twitter, many of whom I've now met face-to-face or at least had conversations with, my Twitter world has intertwined with my Facebook world.  

You know what? I like it. It means the business contacts I've made on Twitter have become more personal–certainly not the same as the ones I've had for years–but I count several among my friends now. And to me, that's what social media is about: creating authentic, mutually beneficial, and yes, personal, relationships.

The only downside I can think of is that I'm a lot more careful now about what I post on Facebook. The merging relationships on Twitter and Facebook mean Holly West, writer, and Holly West, joe-schmoe, are the same and one represents the other. So although I still post a some random stuff on both sites, I'm at least cognizant of the fact that I am, hopefully, creating an audience, and that what I say, whether good or bad, has repercussions.

What about you? Do you find yourself using Twitter and Facebook differently? Has the way you interact on each of them changed over time?

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