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Blogs vs Twitter? It’s the Interactivity | Online Fandom

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Saved by 8 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-03-09


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Twitter isn’t a substitute for blogging.

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on 2009-03-18 by TransTracker

And it should be added that neither should Twitter be merely a rebroadcast of one's blog.

People like Twitterers’ minutia.

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People — even smart thoughtful ones — actually LIKE the mix of links, random thoughts, and bits of daily life. They LIKE watching the person, not the topic.

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Twitter is about banter. That banter is the best part.

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on 2009-03-18 by TransTracker

Playing devil's advocate for the moment: Could the rebroadcast of blog posts via Twitter help to create more discussion around a particular post? And where would/should that discussion occur--e.g. as short bursts of banter on Twitter, or longer comments on the blog site? Could/should Twitter drive conversation (that otherwise might not occur) to the blog site; or should it take place on Twitter? And if on Twitter, how might that conversation remain linked in some way to the original blog post?

Twitter is temporal and cumulative. I made this mistake myself; it’s not until some time after you’ve decided to take Twitter seriously and made it part of the ritual of daily life that you really get it. If you check out someone’s feed, you can get a sense of whether they’re interesting to you, but it’s not until you live with someone’s tweets day in and day out that you know whether the rhythms and content of their messages are going to be rewarding or not.

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on 2009-03-18 by TransTracker

Very true. I had the same experience, in particular with a number of military public affairs Twitter accounts. And this is where I learned that using Twitter to merely rebroadcast blog posts (which themselves were often a rebroadcast of press releases) adds no value, misses the point of Twitter, and is actually quite annoying.

Twitter is a great site for language play. The 140 character limit is a fun challenge for wordsmiths, and those who do it well are joys to read. As a genre, insamuch as it is a genre, the language of Twitter is just way more fun than the language of blogs.

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on 2009-03-18 by TransTracker

Again, I totally agree and have noticed as much myself. There are, at times, "arms races" of "wordsmithery," games of one-upsmanship in which the participants try to out-do the others in terms of the snarkiness, etc. of their Tweets (or status updates on Facebook). Again, this is another aspect of Twitter's uniqueness, fun, and value that is missed when people merely use it as a channel for rebroadcasting blog posts or press releases.

Can we just quit judging every new mode of communication that comes along and finding it wanting in comparison to the last one?

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on 2009-03-18 by TransTracker

Judging in the negative, judgemental way? Yes, we should stop. Comparing and contrasting in a constructive way (as Baym has done here) to determine what's the same/different among these technologies, where their strengths/weakenesses are, their unique attributes, values, etc.? We should do more of that.