Can someone explain to me why people are bashing on the Associated Press?

The Associated Press has decided that they are going to be pushing people via their Twitter account to their Facebook fan page to read articles. They post a bit.ly link and an article heading on @ap and the link takes you to the “Notes” page on their Facebook fan page. Apparently a lot of people think this is unbelievable dumb, or at least TechCrunch and their readers believe so.

I posted this comment on the article:

I’m having trouble understanding why everyone seems to have such a problem with the AP’s approach here. What’s the difference for the user? You click a link, you get to the full content, you read it. Perhaps people are confused and don’t realize you a) don’t have to be logged in to Facebook or even have a Facebook account to read the article, nor do you b) have to become a fan of their page to read the content. So why is this such a negative thing? (LINK)

There are many benefits (they might pick up new fans on their Facebook page, people can more easily share the content with their friends, etc.) but I don’t know why everyone is having a problem with this unless they misunderstand that you don’t have to actually have a Facebook account to view the content.

What I think is happening is that people don’t really understand the very different value that Twitter and Facebook allow publishers to tape into. The people commenting negatively on this seem to think they’re brilliant for saying, “Why would anyone use one social network to point people to another social network?”.

Well, maybe because Twitter is more of a publishing, directional medium than it is a social network. What’s the difference between what the AP is doing and someone posting that they have a new blog post on their Twitter feed, only to then <GASP> have a link on Twitter that takes someone to <DOUBLE GAPS> their blog, i.e. another social network.

I get really tired of people thinking they’re so smart when they don’t realize what they’re saying.