Once again, I haven’t posted for nearly a week. Several excuses, including a deadline or several. I’m not sure about the notion that Twitter has edged out blogging, but I have noticed that I‘m far more inclined these days to send a sentence into the Twitterverse than to craft a thought-out paragraph or three.
So, looking back at the 700+ posts I've written for Cultural Snow over the past three and a half years, I wonder how many of them might have been better expressed in under 140 characters.
PS: Meanwhile, from among the dead trees, Peter Preston lumps together “puerile twitters and bilious blogs”. Although I only read his article because I saw it mentioned amongst the puerility, and now I mention it again, dripping with bile.
11 comments:
I'd say none of them. Some things need expanding into a few paragraphs.
Twitter's a damn sight easier and more immediate and throwaway. I enjoy doing both but am less obsessed with blogging now. Which doesn't make it any less important to me.
Bah. I don't like Twitter. Blogland is a lonely place these days.
I am a tweet refusenik and intend to remain so.
But but but. A lot of good Tweeting only points you in the direction of stuff. We can't alll be pointing or there'd be no stuff to point towards. Get tapping, CS.
If Twitter beats Blogging the next stage will be "WORDING" where you stick a word on an International Message Board and sit back to await the reaction.
Here's mine.... "Bollocks!".
The good thing about blogging is that you can come and go. Much like a brothel I would imagine. Death to Twitter.
My new thought is analogue twitter- you write something interesting on an index card and then stick it up for all to see.
(Was that in excess of 140 characters?)
'Wording' is an interesting suggestion. I'd like to propose a complimentary alternative in which the minimum word limit is 2,000 words. Called 'Writing', perhaps.
Paragraph two. Furthermore, no contributor to this new service shall post more than once a month, and each submission must go through no fewer than three drafts (at least one in longhand), under the supervision of an editor.
'Editing' may threaten to become the new 'Writing', in time, under this scheme. More radical even than 'Wording', its main function would be to contribute to the internet in even fewer than one word. Removing words is where it's going to be at, ever so shortly.
Twitter is comment without analysis. I'm really not interested in what people are doing unless they can imbue it with some meaning, which can only be done in MORE than 140 characters.
Twitter is sex without the seduction and post-coital cigarette. A quick, ugly poke. Short, but never sweet.
Don't go over to the dark side.
I love Twitter! It makes connections really quickly if you let it. But Boz is right - Twitter largely refers back to a hinterland. It therefore won't kill the blog - it will just work in conjunction.
Twitter refers back to the hinterland of blogging; blogging refers back to the hinterland of old media or, even more exciting, real life.
I'm hoping they develop a decent microchip implant soon so I can do away with all these gadgets.
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