My posting's been less frequent here the last few weeks. I apologize.
I blame Twitter.
Twitter's this silly little service that is a mix of a publicly-viewable IM and blogging, called micro-blogging. Inconsequential things that I probably shouldn't bother my esteemed blog readers with- like the fact that I dug 25 lbs of potatoes a couple weeks ago, or that we got a chest freezer last week or that I was running errands before going to Wisconsin last weekend- end up on my Twitter stream. If you DO want to keep up with these inconsequential things, check out the "What I'm Doing" section at the top of the sidebar or follow me. If you don't, be glad I'm not posting mindless stuff like that anymore.
Honestly, I think Twitter is going to cut into the quantity of stuff I blog, but is going to improve the overall quality of the posts. The things that do get posted I (hopefully) will have thought about more. Twitter will catch most of the "I just have to tell this to someone!" stuff.
Not long after I finally joined Twitter, Amy posted a good overview of the service that I thought was insightful. Check it out if you're considering joining. She points out ways it can help blogging from a social networking point of view. I can see what others are talking about, perhaps find the best buy on local deals, and can publicize my own posts easily.
I should add: Twitter limits updates to 140 characters. Why so short? That's the standard text-message character limit, and the service was originally created to use from a cell phone, text-messaging updates about what you're doing, wherever you are. Many (maybe most?) users do this. I don't have a text message plan on my cell phone, so I don't- all my updates happen while I'm sitting in front of a computer.
Do you Twitter? Does it affect your blogging? Why do you Twitter?
4 comments:
Thank you so much for the link and I have loved getting to know you better through your Twitter posts.
I do Twitter and it has had numerous benefits for me with running a website. I have been connected to people within my community that I did not know on a personal level. It has been a great networking tool and I have found lots of great opportunities to write and work with others.
I think it is great, but it can be a major time sucker :)
I heart twitter! It doesn't affect my blogging, but then I mostly Twitter during work, and I don't blog at work. I almost always use my cell phone for twittering, and Paul does too. :-) One thing I love about twitter is it allows me to stay in touch with friends - twitter has an awesome mobile site (though limited in capability - i.e. adding friends, etc.) that I can get from my BlackBerry.
I tried twitter with a couple guys from my church group. It failed to hold my interest in any way, and I gave it up after about 3 weeks.
I can see how it's useful to some people... we tried to use it because we wanted to get to know each other better, and live along-side each other through the daily grind, in a way. But where I'm cold to it is that it's more or less like a chat room. Somehow, a large mass of people all throwing inane comments out into a public forum just doesn't feel the same as doing the work of getting some personal time with someone and sharing the same inane things in a one-on-one context.
I'll stick to early morning breakfasts and evenings in living rooms for the chit chat, and blogs/facebook for the big news.
Well, I'll be the voice of dissent here & say that I miss the everyday homey blog posts!
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