Tech & VC 05 Sep 2007 03:45 pm
Twitter’s Ruining My Blogging
I just wrote my first blog post in over a week. I’ve been silent because I haven’t had anything to say that couldn’t be said in less than 140 characters. And, if I thought it needed more than 140 characters (the size of a Twitter post), it then became a challenge to see if I could simplify my thought so that it would fit in 140 characters.
As a result, anything I’ve wanted to publish in the last week I’ve done on Twitter.
I just did it now. I was contemplating writing a blog post about my thoughts on the Apple announcements today. But, I managed to compress my thoughts into a Twitter post, so I chose Twitter as my place to publish. My post read:
“AAPL’s down over 5%. Why was today’s news received so poorly? Consumers and Tech Pundits seem happy… perhaps price cuts are bad business?”
It’s succinct and interesting (to me). What more would I really need to say?
16 Responses to “Twitter’s Ruining My Blogging”
on 06 Sep 2007 at 6:42 am 1.Kayvon said …
I can see the appeal of Twitter and I’ve been following your and Fred’s posts on it with some interest, but I’m just not that interested in jumping aboard just yet. In the meantime, I’ve been wondering what happened to your blog posting frequency.
Why not set Twitter to automatically post to your blog so those of us still interested in hearing from you – particularly as it sounds like you’re now using Twitter to communicate opinions /impressions rather than the “status updates” that I had thought most used Twitter to relay – can still follow along (albeit not instantly)?
Some people might argue that it would be frustrating to see a ton of Twitter-channel posts on your blog, but, again, I only think that would apply if you were constantly delivering “heading out for coffee” twits/posts all day long, thus drowning out the rest of the blog; if I’m wrong and you _are_ bookending your more thoughtful twits with constant “status update” messages then maybe Twitter isn’t the right medium for communicating both kinds of posts.
on 06 Sep 2007 at 7:49 am 2.Andrew Parker said …
Yea, I’m torn between “status updates” and “microblogging” on Twitter. The two practices are quite different, yet both fit 140 characters. Maybe I need two twitter usernames.
In the meantime, I’m looking into wordpress plugins that would post an aggregated Twitter blog post of, say, a week’s worth of Twitters, but I haven’t found anything I really like yet.
on 06 Sep 2007 at 9:44 am 3.michael galpert said …
i feel the same way.
I twitter (@msg) and I tumble(msg.tumblr.com) and dont feel the need to blog.
I think it can potentially make for better quality writing.
But only time will tell.
on 07 Sep 2007 at 11:37 am 4.Corey said …
Add Facebook (notes even!) Twitter and I’m in the same boat.
My blog has turned into a venue for things that I want Google to index — generally articles that will help future peoples.
on 07 Sep 2007 at 12:25 pm 5.Tracy Sheridan said …
I expressed the very same thing on both Facebook and Twitter – and have had many responses back echoing this sentiment.
Twitter is much more than microblogging; it’s a shifting of culture.
on 07 Sep 2007 at 1:41 pm 6.Vincent van Wylick said …
If it’s a shifting of culture then it’s a terrible shift. The world needs writers and twitterers to express complex thoughts and dynamic ones. The value of Twitter is that, when taken in aggregate, it shows the waves of our internet society. People moan and people laugh, and all that is reflected in the constant stream of twitters. One of my last twitters today was that one could write a whole book about today’s connected society based in following twitters and I really believe that.
That said, there is room, much room still for blogging, aka publishing longer-complete thoughts. These are the pieces of text that have an influence, that shift societies and lead to rebellions, not twitters.
Twitters work well in conjunction to that because they help with the generation and spreading of ideas through short posts and twitterfeeds(.com). But they do not, should not, replace the complexity of thought.
And may I suggest that if you have nothing to blog it’s to do with that you have nothing to say, something which happens to every blogger once in a while. Don’t blame Twitter, just work towards regaining your creativity, be it from life or twitter-life. Life is a journey and focussing on every rock helps nothing and no-one.
on 07 Sep 2007 at 2:06 pm 7.Evelyn Rodriguez said …
Me too. Although I’ve made myself blog (which isn’t a good thing… it used to be something I completely looked forward to. Now it’s more fun to tweet and tumble).
This week thinking about how I could write a 10-page business plan in a series of 7 or 8 tweets. Serious. One tweet for product/service, another for marketing/sales, etc. Of course, the powers that be seem to still want reems of paper , but I thought if I distilled the essence down, it would zero in and clarify the juiciest part of the point. And then that’d be the focal point when I had to fluff it up later.
on 09 Sep 2007 at 3:55 pm 8.MMartin said …
I wouldn’t say Twitter is “ruining” Blogging experience. It “changed the way” I blogged. Many of the thougths I share on Twitter let me build and draft easily my posts.
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on 01 Oct 2007 at 3:35 pm 12.Jim Tobin at Ignite Social Media said …
It seems like all the “rules” are being challenged. Everyone used to say keep blog posts short, but some of the best ones can be quite long. Everyone used to (and many still do) say that corporations can’t blog, but they then encourage corporations to do it and don’t expect it to change the “rules” when they do.
I think that WordPress plugin to make select Tweets appear in your blog (sort of Tumblr style) could be very cool.
By the way, found this article when Steve Rubel Twitter’d about it…
on 02 Oct 2007 at 5:22 pm 13.Andrew said …
I know exactly how you feel about whether to blog, or Twitter. Its so much easier to post up a short and sweet Twitter then it is to write a post for your blog. I still try to write to my blog 5 times a week, but sometimes its just so much easier to post on Twitter.
Thats one reason I have installed a Twitter plugin to my blog so that people who do read my blog, and notice that I haven’t posted anything new up, can see what I have posted on Twitter.
I really nice plugin to see would be a way to incorporate Twitter posts directly into my blog, in the timeline with the regular posts. Who knows, maybe I’ll tackle it one day …
on 30 Oct 2007 at 3:57 pm 14.teapeEpizelal said …
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on 01 Nov 2007 at 1:40 am 15.Dennison Uy - Graphic Designer said …
I definitely agree with you. Many times I want to share something only to end up twitting it. So, I have restricted blogging to full-length articles while Twitter handles miniscule rants and raves. Works great for me.
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