There seems to have been one heck of a shift online over the last eight months as more and more people started to use Twitter, Plurk, and a number of other social media platforms. Rather than write out ideas and gripes on a blog, people are instead condensing their immediate thoughts into a 140-character message and blasting it off to a much larger audience.
I recently had the opportunity to ask some people about their thoughts on the subject, and here are some results in four areas:
- Time – Tweeting requires far less time than writing a blog
- Portability – Tweeting is far easier to do via cell phone than writing a blog post
- Readership – Hundreds of people will follow a Twit who might have only enjoyed a readership of less than half their current Twitter followers
- “Cool Cred” – Tweeting is considered much cooler than blogging
It’s interesting how quickly these opinions formed, as it was less than a year ago when people were still going crazy over blogs, MMO, and embedding YouTube videos into their posts. So what does this mean to the blog?
Not a whole heck of a lot.
Blogging will continue to be here for years to come, but the blog is going to transform from being seen as a conversation to instead be a source of targeted niche information. The days of the personal blog are not gone, but there will be far fewer people writing about their personal lives with any level of detail on a personal website. Places like Twitter will become home for our immediate thoughts and activities.
Or so I think. What do you think? Has the personal blog been replaced by internet-based SMS-like services?
Unless I’m DOING IT WRONG, Twitter doesn’t even accept messages from NTT DoCoMo. So what good is it? Twitter is pointless from the web. No one gives a fat rat’s ass if I’m brushing my teeth or whatever.
Hmm … I think you’re doing it wrong
I have to use Ping.fm in order to update Twitter from my cell phone. What I don’t like about this, though, is that SoftBank doesn’t let us install software on our phones to make them more useful.
Are you using Twitter wrong? Well … if you’re writing about the mundane day to day, you’re right that nobody will care. Instead, it seems that Twitter is the perfect place to send out partially thought-out phrases, pointless YouTube links, and obscure @{Name} LOL statements
It’s still better than what WordPress’ “creator” does, though.
I was thinking the same questions as you. I was wondering why Twitter was so much more popular then blogging recently. I thought people can make short posts on their blog also but I see that tweeting may be a bit easier and people may become tired of writing longer posts.
I feel that blogging will be more focused on specific subjects and topics to inform people.
To my mind Twitter is well suited to mobile device users who are pounding out character strings with their thumbs on tiny screens. And perhaps less accomplished bloggers gravitate to short thought bursts rather than sitting down to long sessions to compose their thoughts.
But as someone who is interested in following the thoughts and lives of ex pats in Japan I much prefer the insightful writing of a good blog such as this one. A thoughtful mind is a horrible thing to waste, keep up the great writing Jason.
@Tornadoes28 – It’s a shame that people might get tired of writing longer posts. I have usually found this to be the most effective way of finding out whether my opinions on something are in line with reality, or way out of whack.
Then again, perhaps this is why many people don’t like writing too many words …
@Richard – Thanks for the compliment, Richard. Sorry I haven’t been able to write so much over the last few months, though. You’d be surprised just how little time one has when they invest every spare minute into a project that can actually earn them a promotion in this difficult country. Hmm … sounds like a good thing to write about.
Twitter has certianly been one of the many places where people enjoy hammering out semi-incoherent thoughts and getting a response. This used to happen a lot on IRC but, as people started to migrate to other services, the pointless yammer migrated with them. However, just like on IRC, we can ignore the people that don’t make any sense or add nothing of value to our days.
I am very interested to see how your software project turns out. Hopefully you will be able to make a business case for a good pay increase. I don’t know what the hourly rate is for a software developer is in Japan but it shouldn’t be difficult to put a yen value to the time you have put into it. Plus the increase in productivity of the staff, I’m sure it all adds up.
Launching the JapanSoc Forums during the current Twitter boom has been hard. I’m confident they’ll still grow and be useful, but I’ve had to utilize Twitter and other social networking sites like FriendFeed and Facebook to alert people about new posts in the forums.
If you build it, they won’t come. If you build a massive Twitter following and tell them to come, they’ll do so in droves!
I’ve not been blogging much, but I’m still very active online. So, in order to keep my blog the online center for Nick Ramsay, I’ve added Lifestream. See for yourself.