Experiments in Mass Appeal

For the last 22 days I've been carrying out an experiment on Facebook and Twitter. Each day I post a Christmas song in what is wittily entitled "Mark's musical advent calendar".

It gave me a chance to share with my friends, some of the music that I like to listen to around this time of year. I have an extensive Christmas playlist that I like to listen to mainly as I drive around and I thought that it would be an opportunity to share some of these songs with my friends, mainly via YouTube clips.

It's gone fairly well and certainly on Facebook I've had lots of comments and "likes". Every day has resulted in some kind of response from my friends. That has made it more fun for me and inspired some of the music posted.

The response on Twitter however has been completely different. It's been the social media equivalent of tumbleweed blowing down the deserted high-street! I think I've had one, response may be two?

What does that tell me? Well I think maybe it just reflects the fact that on Twitter you can follow anybody whether they know you or not. That means that my Twitter feed is full of posts from people that I don't really know and can skip over if I'm pressed for time. Clearly my posts get read that way too!!

On Facebook however my timeline is full of posts from closer friends and I'm therefore more interested in what they're saying and I take more time to read them. That seems to work for my friends as well bearing in mind their reaction to my posts.

Not an earthshattering discovery I know, but I did expect a bigger response to my twitter posts.