When I started out as a blogger I was a little hesitant to really dig into the idea of a glorified online diary. What’s the point of sharing these posts with people may or may not even know? Who cares? After giving it a go primarily as a method of communicating my goings-on with those I left behind when living in Orlando, I found myself thinking like a blogger. If I did something cool or came across something interesting I instantly started thinking “oh I need to get this up on my blog!” and started thinking what I wanted to say before I even got to my computer. My life soon became a string of events that where justified solely by an online presence. If I did something, I did it to blog about it later.
Simply put, Twitter is killing my blog.
How could I go from positing 5-6 times a week about anything and everything, to barely getting 5 posts off in a month? Its not the fact that I am back home again, because my 2nd blog took off right where the Orlando one left off and boasted just as many posts as its predecessor. Honestly the downfall of my blogging fervor is that little blue birdy that everyone is talking about: Twitter.
The ability to shoot of a rapid posting from my phone at any point, is much more appealing than sitting down at the keyboard and hammering something out at the end of an evening. Twitter is so much faster, better streamlined and much simpler than a fully fledged blog. It’s Facebook and Blogspot’s illegitimate lovechild. All the benefits of both, with none of the drawbacks. Social networking has never been easier and neither has blogging. I still like posting more than 140 characters once in a while, particularly movie reviews. But Twitter has undeniably put a dent in my (and many others) blogging by appealing to short attention spans, hunger for updates and the need for social networking.
I really like Twitter. At first I didn’t really ‘get it’ as many of you probably don’t. But after giving it time and seeing the power of the social networking tool I am beyond sold. For those of you still on the fence or in the dark about the whole thing, let me try and pitch it to you.
Twitter is a micro-blogging service. What’s micro-blogging you say? Well think status updates or mini, one-sentence blog posts and you are pretty much there. The beauty of Twitter is that you subscribe to the people you’d like to ‘follow’ and every time they post a comment (Tweat) then you are notified. Over a given day you will be constantly connect with whomever you want to follow and will receive updates during the day. Some people use the service to promote things with links or offers. Others simply like to keep you updated on whatever they are thinking or doing at any given time. What you use it for is completely up to you. I keep track of my favorite webcast releases and the score of the Caps games for example. As well as follow people you can view mini-profiles of anyone on Twitter and see who they are following. This is a great way to expand your network as well as see what other streams people are subscribing to. I am particularly fond of Twitter’s iPhone abilities and find having a mobile Tweatdeck to be very addictive and engaging.
So that’s pretty much it. Its one of those things that is blowing up right now and will become the norm very quickly. With celebrities and companies jumping on the bandwagon, and other sites mimicking its features and layout (I am looking at you Facebook) Twitter is going to be around for a while. Might as well get in on the ground floor.
There are many pages out there (like this one) that list celebrities and Tweater’s of note. Some Celebrity Streams I subscribe to, to get you started:In the world of Jamie (@ lobodestroyo) a few of my friends have jumped on board. You can catch there streams below:
I’m new to Twitter, and being that I don’t use my cell phone for texting much, I am a pretty poor Tweeter. Much like my blog posts, my Tweats are sporadic and often belated. If this is all jibberish to you check out this page and get up to speed. However the other day when logging in I found someone was watching Barack Obama. I checked out his feed and decided to follow suit. This morning I get a notification in my inbox informing me that Barack Obama is now following me on Twitter. Sure it’s no more impressive than having a celebrity on your MySpace friends list, but I still get a kick out of it. I’m pretty sure if you follow him, you’ll find yourself under the presidential eye too. I don’t know how he (or the person he pays to monitor his account) keeps tabs on all 253,562 people he follows, but I am pretty sure it has something to do with Santa Clausian powers only Presidents can wield.
Posts
