Twitter, Facebook, G+ -- Face-to-Face?

Kyle Small was asking about the difference between Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and face-to-face relationships. My response:

Tweets are short but sweet -- a broadcast to all who care and who can keep up with the flow. Hopefully someone in there you’ll get to know. The culture of Twitter is about sharing information.

Facebook posts are for those you already know -- keeping the bonds fresh through games, surveys, and gimmicks. The culture of Facebook is about sharing experiences -- pictures and happenings.

The culture of Google+ has yet to be defined. Will it be more relational or informational? It is better suited for sharing information, in that unlike Twitter, the size of posts are not limited. G+ is better suited than FB for developing relational connections through the highly flexible hangouts. The picture tools are perhaps already more powerful than FB.

The circles in G+ allow you to control inflow and outflow of information more tightly than the other social media -- more information moves through the system -- but with less sense of overload. If you broadcast with Twitter you narrowcast with G+. (Remember, Google’s goal is to organize the world’s information.)

Look for Google to roll out powerful search and integration with their other features.

Expect G+ to become more versatile and task oriented than FB or Twitter. Once the organization and business accounts are opened it will change even more. In the educational realm G+ will give both Moodle and Blackboard a real run for their money.

G+ is by far the most powerful of the social media. And it hasn’t even been officially released, yet. We’re all still playing with the beta version.

And then there are the face-to-face encounters. Expect them to be fewer and further between. But expect them to be deeper -- nurtured through more frequent online contact. Expect an integration and synthesis of social media and face-to-face encounters. The open question has to do with which media will dominate in the synthesis.