Facebook message vs. wall post?

A message is private, like an email a wall post is not.

“Last night was a blast” = wall post
“Sorry about the gonorrhea” = message.

Your wall post can be seen by anyone that the owner of the wall allows to see it, regardless of your own privacy settings. If you post something on John Doe’s wall, all of John Doe’s friends can see it. In fact, if John Doe hasn’t restricted his wall at all, and let’s “everyone” see his wall, then everyone can see your wall post.

Your messages can only be seen by the person you send it to.

Messages are like emails. Wall posts are like public comments.

messages are delivered to one person. wall posts are delivered to all.

I turned off my wall so that people can only send me messages. I got tired of semi-private conversations being made public for no good reason other than that Facebook allowed it.

aidje – never thought of that. does it tell the people that your wall is turned off, or does it just show up as a message, or not at all?

People simply can’t write on my wall. There’s no text field for them. I had done this once before and people kind of freaked out, so this time when I disabled the wall, I wrote the following the in the little box that shows up under one’s profile picture: ”Yes, I turned off my wall. Just send a message. It’s the same thing, except that it won’t be seen by four hundred people. (Status updates can still be commented on.)” And, since Facebook now just wants to be Twitter, my Facebook status is directly linked to my Twitter account.