Twitter is certainly dominating the blogosphere right now. I’m reading about the business model (local is the new black, as you very well know), about why we should be happy that brands are there, about the new search functionality, and it just goes on from there.
Is it indeed killing blogging?
Of course not. Twitter is microblogging, which in itself is empowering blogging, and that is a truly good thing.
It’s pretty simple really. You can easily send a flimsy thought to your followers using Twitter. The ease is unrivaled, a text message and it’s there for the world to see, or a mere click in your favorite Twitter app. That, and the 140 character cap, is making us communicate things that otherwise might’ve been blog posts. One could argue that it would indeed be proof of that whole “killing blogging” reasoning, but it is in fact the opposite.
Most tweets are short, uninteresting and unpolished nuggets. Sometimes they are brilliant, but most often they are not. Every little thought that ends up on Twitter is a blog post not written, and since most of the tweets are unpolished nonsense, it really isn’t a loss for traditional blogging.
So what about the excellent, almost genius, tweets of brilliance?
They often become blog posts, one way or the other, and getting polished in the process.
Twitter is great, I love it (follow me and the Blog Herald if you will), and I use it for communication and for things that I just don’t feel like blogging about. You should too, if you feel like having an outlet for all the stuff that won’t make it to your blog.
The fact that Twitter is more accessible, actually makes the blog posts that in fact do get written and published better. Sounds reasonable enough?
