Some Bail on Blogs in Favor of Twitter

Nick Wilson says he has unsubscribed from 100 blogs in favor of following their Twitter streams instead. That's a radical move right now, but as Twitter grows I bet we'll see more of it. I have heard this from a few folks. In the interest of presenting both sides of the issue, there's also a Twitter backlash too.

Twitter is getting me to re-think about where and how I publish. What I love about Twitter is that I can easily publish on the go. That's a boon since I tend to be very mobile. Of course I can do this with TypePad, but the format of blogging really doesn't lend itself well to posting a lot on the go. You would unsubscribe if I posted 15 messages a day here with 160 characters each.

Where I am thinking of going is this: I will micro blog very actively on Twitter (feed) throughout the day (and night) and I will use my blog to publish longer pieces. The link round-ups will continue as is. So, basically I am thinking of keeping MP at 80% of what it is now (in terms of volume of posts, quality remains the same), but for those of you who want more you can get it in my Twitter stream.

This is not set in stone yet. I want to see how Twitter shakes out. It could be a fad. Further, I am open to your ideas here. Thoughts?

Comments

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Interesting experiment; I'll be following it both here and on Twitter. I look at Twitter as a "party-line" concept and worry that much of the ambient noise will interfere enough, so that it won't take the place of blogs. I see it more as a supplementary quick source of info, similar to RSS, but again, I'm most interested in how this plays out for you. Of course, I found this post via Twitter; ironic, no? ;)

[luca]

I follow you and others on twitter (thanks for adding me as well). The problem is that sometimes I don't really understand what Twitter is. Sometimes I lose time following everything on Twitter. There are 60% (I'd say even 70%) of messages that I don't really care. But I cannot filter them. I still prefer to read blogs.

On the other hand, twitter is good if you want to spread the word quickly about something (news, invitation to a dinner and so on.

[Jeff Caylor]

Hey Steve,
I'm all for early adopting, but it feels like Twitter has a ways to go before I will subscribe to your feed there. I have absolutely no interest in what you're saying to all the other Twits. I could set up a feed filter to just get non "@" posts, but why? No offense, but while it's probably more fun for you, the content of your tweets is far less interesting than your MP posts.

By the way, you have a typo in the link to your twitter page above. Produces a cute cat pic, though.

[Scott Monty]

Twitter has its place, and I think it's just as you've described it. I prefer to consider Twitter as a public IM system - you're sharing quick thoughts (after all it's less than 160 characters, right?), but with a group or the public at large rather than an IM buddy.

To me, Twittering vs. blogging is akin to IMing vs. emailing. Longer formats allow you to publish deeper commentary while short formats allow you to share thoughts on the fly, when they hit you.

[Caff]

I'm guessing down the line there Twitter will allow for more multimedia to be shared as well - send a pic/vid from your phone instead of text.

[Steve Novoselac]

I think Twitter has it's place. I think its good for keeping friends abreast at what you are up to. I see it as a good meetup tool or just letting people know whats up. Blog can be more in depth, thought out.

I think some of the use on twitter is annoying, Scoble and Rubel public IM'ing? :)

It's a good way to keep your closer friends up to date with where you are at or what you are doing, which I guess is the tag line right, "What are you doing?"

[Rob Usdin]

My comments on Twitter are here:

http://www.usdin.net/blog/2007/03/twitter.html

--*Rob

[Rick Mahn]

Looks like many of your Twitter friends have commented here as well. I agree that this is an interesting approach, and one that makes the most sense as well. I'll be monitoring both feeds as I always enjoy reading MP.

There are some really good opinions here in the comments, and I guess to "get" twitter, you need to be an active participant. And even so, Jeff's comment above has a point about "@" directed twits don't make a lot of sense if you don't have that person as a friend. Still, the interaction between Twitters is what is drawing me to participate. The perspectives I got out of the past weekend's growth was really inspiring to me as a blogger.

[Jen]

I think the idea of blogging via Twitter is a bit much if you're going to be having a conversation with others. If you're sending out bits of information maybe once an hour or something like that, then yes it'll be an interesting feed.

I read your blog a lot and recently started to follow you on Twitter. However, you were twitterin' a lot, and often you'd ask a question for people to respond to or start a discussion. Problem is, you are only following a certain group of people - not all of your followers. Therefore, in my case specifically, if I wanted to participate, I'd have to hope you were reading the public timeline and would catch a "@steve" response. Plus if I were to have responded, then those that were following me become confused. It's kind of like the cool kids sitting at the other side of the table having a fun conversation and I thought about participating... but would you have heard me? (and ME also being all those other followers of yours that you don't follow back...)

So now I follow, but I don't receive the msgs via my cellphone. I log into Twitter and read them there instead. Not as instant, and seems a lot like a blog now - now I have two sites to go to for the same person...

Twitter only allows so many characters, especially those that receive their twitters via cellphones.

[Kevin Dugan]

I'm enjoying the backlash more. It's early and comparatively it's not all Twitter talk.

http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/2007/03/twitter_hater.html

[MWD]

To me there is just too much noise going on in Twitter for it to be really all that valuable. As Jen and Rick seem to suggest, how do you filter out the noise? Only twitter with your "friends"? That's great, but isn't that done already with IM and text messaging? So, figure out a way to send IM's to a group (which Sametime already can do..yea, but who uses Sametime?) or figure out a a way to group text message all your friends and twitter loses its value.

[Nick O'Neill]

I like using Twitter a couple of times a day to give little updates, but using it non-stop is really useless since it clutters other people's text messages. On high frequency users they should have a timed release system so that you can get all of a person's posts on a periodic basis rather than having each one sent individually.

[Jen]

Nick - I'm the same way. A few messages when I feel like saying something - silly, fun, useless, whatever. But I don't twitter heavily.

And bouncing from MWD's comment; filtering the 'noise' - well it's noise if you pull from the public timeline. I guess the way to find people you want to follow starts not from the public timeline of Twitter, but from bloggers and friends that you already "follow". That's how I add anyone, names I recognize and would want to get twitters from. I might click on a name here and there that flashes by on the timeline to see what kind of stuff they post but rarely do I add someone.

By the way, I'm at http://twitter.com/Jenguin - if you check it out you'll see my posts are random and just little outbursts.. observations.. etc. But as I said in my other comment - you can't post much because of the character limits...

[Erik Sebellin-Ross]

I'm not a big fan of this. Twitter is cute -- it's the widget of the minute. How long can you actively keep up twittering for it to be interesting? Do people really -- really -- want to know what's going on in someone's life that much? At what point does this become silly, or vacuous?

Steve -- we read Micro Persuasion because we like the content. It's interesting, it makes us think. The Twitters I've seen have been void of substance and, therefore, value.

[Mark Smillie]

I like it. Twitter has it's place as a memo keeper...like jotting down a note in a moleskine, anywhere any time. I like the idea of adding voice notes, pics and video as well. Clips. The web continues to granulize...

[Lee]

I apologize in advance if I'm about to come across as rude, but really, why the hell should we be following your twitterations? Half of your posts seem to involve twitter itself... that's like calling somebody on the cellphone and talking about how great it is to talk on a cellphone. Then there seem to be all these subconversations you have with your followers: I don't know about you, but reading somebody's chat history? ...yawn.

Again, I apologize, and you can probably tell that I am "part of the backlash," however silly that sounds. I just feel like twitter added a whole lot of whitenoise to an already information saturated life. And really, why do I want to follow every little fart of thought you or anyone else has... honestly, I have a lot of thoughts myself, and I'm sure everybody does... if we all start posting all of our thoughts all of the time, then what the hell do we have conversations about?

This reminds of a time when I was a kid wondering what it'd be like to know everything there is to know, ever. The more I thought about it, the less appealing it became. Do I really want to know what exact angle my legs are making sitting here, or how many grains of sand are stuck to the bottom of my shoe? Obviously you can take this to infinity; that is to say, there is so much worthless information to be had, that it would be maddening to know even part of it. Back to this twitter: Why don't you save up all of your good and interesting thoughts, which you surely have (I've been following you for some time now), and collect them into neat little coherent posts. I don't need to know what you are doing right now. Maybe your mom or wife or whoever needs to know what you're up to all of the time, or people who have nothing better to do, but really, focus on the blog.

Sorry man, really, I don't know you, and none of this is meant to be personally against you in the least bit. Maybe I'm just getting uncomfortable with the rise of yet another technological "advance" that in the end will not make us more free, or our lives easier, but rather tie us down even more than we already are. I, for one, am not immune to information fatigue, and if all these mundane, trivial twitterations become part of our collective information stream... well, there's only so much whitenoise you can take.

Wow that was longer than I meant it to be.

[Erik Sebellin-Ross]

No need to apologize for offering your opinion, Lee ;)

[MWD]

Good point, Jen. But at the same time isn't it also noise of all the people you have as friends or "follow" choose to post every random thought that pops in their head? Do I really care they hate their job, are leaving work, standing in line at Starbucks, fixing dinner, feeling depressed, hate their job, feeling depressed, going to sleep, feeling depressed, hate their job? Again, it seems much of what I want to know from my friends, or my friends want me to know can be handled via IM or text messaging. How to you filter out all the random thoughts? I chose to follow a couple of "A list" bloggers just to see what all the fuss was about. Seems most of the "twits" dealt with what other A list blogger they just talked with, saw across the hall, had coffee with, what thier friends twittered. Basically they all twittered about twittering... bla bla bla....less than 1% had any substance (of course, the same can be said for most of their blog posts, so there you go)

[Duke]

Steve,
There is probably as many people not going to use twitter as there are people who are going to use twitter...personally, I think the fad will hit the wall soon and those finding no substance to the conversations there will turn away from it like many are turning away from groups like Facebook and MySpace. I agree with most, there is way too much noise to wade through on twitter to find out what is going on that is of value with twitter.

[David Scott Lewis]

Nick Wilson is in desperate need of therapy, more at the crisis intervention level.

You guys need to get out of your little worlds (Manhattan and Second Life) and see what the real world is all about.

This kind of crap is a disservice to technology innovation and creativity. It shifts the focus from real innovation to making toys.

My rant for today ...

I have to tell you, living in China often helps me get an arms-length, third-party perspective on things. I sometimes wonder if the entire Web 2.0 world (especially those living in Silicon Valley or Alley) isn't on crack.

[MWD]

Lee hit the nail on the head. It just occured to me, Twitter allows everyone to be a "real time" version of that old Larry King USA today column. Or rather, an old SNL skit put into real life

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96tlarryking1.phtml

[Derek Tutschulte]

Gotta love openness. Twitter is clearly a victory for amateur developers.

Twitter will not be replacing blogging anytime soon. Short messaging has merely made the full migration to the webpage, availing itself to a far wider audience of users and app developers. All sorts of novices, those who can probably grok user interface better than the highest and mightiest developers, can now build even better web apps.

How creatively destructive!

I think that hypothesizing that Twitter will replace the more thoughtful practice of blogging, however, is like saying Grafitti will snuff out newspapers. Not buying it for a second.

[Steve Rubel]

Ok, great feedback. This is why I love blogging (and Twitter too). I get to learn. I have responded to your thoughts.

[Vietnam holiday]

It's a good way to keep your closer friends up to date with where you are at or what you are doing, which I guess is the tag line right, "What are you doing?"

[Gary C.]

If twitter ends up as the "myspace of texting," then the "friendster of texting" would have to be UPOC.com.