Why I'm Leaving Twitter and Returning to Blogging | Hacker News Reader

Why I'm Leaving Twitter and Returning to Blogging

astartupaday.wordpress.com

36 pointsastartupaday20 comments

i didn't know twittering and blogging were mutually exclusive.

Twittering and blogging have their own separate places. It's perfectly fine to engage in both of them.

Or, you know, focus on one and occasionally visit the other.

Opportunity cost.

the way i see it, twittering lends itself to blogging and vice-versa. you hammer out a blog post then use twitter to get eyes on your post. plus, how much time could twitter possibly take from blogging? you can't get very much across in 140. symbiosis is the key

Twitter kind of acts like rss

Yes, and also as comments.

Good point, I think I'll automate my twittering by converting my rss feed to tweets.

because it is so hard to come up with 140 coherent characters of thought.

seriously, if you can twitter and be coherent, what does that say about you?

From the post:

"As I alluded to in the title, I don’t mean for this to be an indictment of Twitter. I’m still going to be using it regularly for quick status updates or to notify followers when I have a new blog post ready. Like most shiny new things on the Interwebs, it’s all about finding the right tools for the job at hand."

If you have enough time, they don't have to be. But if publishing is a side-venture, you probably need to make a choice.

Thanks.. The article was thought provoking.

For me, thinking about tweeting something new every hour tires my brain.. yet I like to blog.. You can blog once a week or even once a month and still be considered an 'active' blogger.. but who could say the same about tweeting.. I also feel so much more productive when blogging.

I will have to give in someday I'm sure but for now I'm resisting the twitter borg.. Everyone is so social in this brave new world. Doesn't anyone want to be alone with their thoughts anymore?

I don't think anyone would read my blog if it were the same content as my twitter. An endless stream of 140-character tidbits is different, to readers, than 140-word rants about the same things.

There are many times when I want to write more than 140 characters about something... but if I did that, nobody would read them.

(Twitter used to let you submit the form with more than 140 characters... now it rejects those posts server-side. Fucking Twitter...)

I think both with continue to co-exist and will also see a trend of centralizing our posting at one place. In fact, we are already seeing it with Posterous and Tumblr. It allows much more freedom to users.

I also think twitter is paving way for mainstream blogging, as it attracted so many mainstream users requiring so low commitment from users to engage and got people into habit of opening-up and sharing more and more of their thoughts. Eventually they will sure long for more freedom and blogging is the answer.

> "Idea: OneClick – Mobile app, allows users to perform commonly-used, very specific actions in a single click.(i.e. get directions to address)"

143 characters

my version: "OneClick: Mobile app, users perform common, specific actions in single click; eg, get directions."

98 characters. i agree with his sentiment, but i didn't find his example too compelling...maybe he has room to grow for twitter communication...although an extra 45 characters still might not be sufficient.

The weird thing about twitter is that I see a lot of people who e-mail (longer form writing) me after doing a tweet and their e-mail is a lot tighter even if it is over 140 characters.

If the issue with blogging is feeling obliged to write longer posts, don't. Keep them as short as they need to be, or as time permits, and just make the font bigger.

I agree with the article as it perfectly explains why I never joined Twitter in the first place. I can't see wasting my time and that of other people by spamming them with 140 character tidbits.

Twitter is useful for sending small bits of information and telling people about simple things, but it isn't designed for complex ideas. It is more designed for applications such as sharing interesting links that you have found.

You're not the only one to have expressed this attitude but I find it strange. How long does it take you to write 140 characters or less? Also, unless people are actively following you you are not "spamming" them.

Your summary of what Twitter is good for is accurate as far as it goes but what you are missing is that, when they are timely and from interesting people, those small bits of information can be valuable.

I follow around 200 low-volume people on Twitter with similar interests to my own (machine learning, maths, stats, Clojure, ambient music). The number of times I have got useful advice and heads-up on recent articles, events and releases makes Twitter worthwhile the small attentional overhead I give it. On top of that, there is a nice sense of community that has built up over time.

Dismissing something based on its functionality alone without having used it means you won't experience the myriad ways people make use of that functionality. Emergent behaviour is powerful and difficult to predict.

"Computers? Sure, they're useful for quickly processing numbers represented in binary but it's not like they are designed for doing really complex things."

>How long does it take you to write 140 characters or less?

The proper question would be "how much does the context switching costs?", and the answer would be "a lot". Some estimate it can take 30 minutes to get back into working mode.

So don't do it while you are working.

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