It always made me laugh, hearing Twitter touted as a "microblogging platform." That surely has to rank as one of the worst upsells ever? I don't, after all, call my Post-It notes "micronovels" or the pens in my pocket "portable word processors" (Handwriting recognition in version 2.0).
A blog, surely, has to be more than 140 characters. It has to be writing, which demands a certain degree of literacy. And, while spontaneity is a great thing, surely writing a blog post should be a deliberate, thoughtful exercise? That doesn't sound like Twitter at all.
Well, suddenly, I "get" it.
Many people treat their blog writing as a diary; that's all well and good. But I remember the experience of getting a diary as a Christmas present from an obscure aunt when I was a kid. It starts well enough. January 1's entry is well-crafted, reflecting your intent to be the next Samuel Pepys, and record every detail of your life for posterity and publication (once, of course, you attained fame and fortune, married a Doctor Who assistant, and became an eccentric millionaire after inventing self-ironing underwear). By January 2, it's degenerated to "Got up late. Felt like crap", and the only other entry in the whole book is the aforementioned obscure aunt's birthday.
Nowadays, I regularly find myself on trips to the internetless boondocks. Email, text, and 'phone service is patchy at best, and about the only outlet I have while in this filming location for "Deliverance" is jotting down a few notes for ping.fm to post. Perish the thought - I'm keeping a diary again. On Twitter. Then I went to see "Star Trek" and realized what all that Captain's log stuff is about. He's tweeting.
OK, sure. Twitter can be a diary - for people like me whose attention span at keeping a diary doesn't get past January 2. Blogs can be diaries. But can Twitter be a micro-blog?
Then it hit me. I'm getting blog article ideas all the time. Usually I open up an email, jot down a line or two, save it as a draft, with every intention to flesh it out later. The result is inevitable - a drafts folder cluttered with 'ideas' for blog posts. There's a few that mystify me, taunting me, because I honestly can't remember what they were about. Very few of them ever get the TLC to become full-fledged articles. Arguably, that means they weren't great ideas to begin with.
However, they sure would have fit into 140 characters and could have been written on the wind. The ones that solicited a reply or a RT would have been the ones worth more work - and the others? Not only are they published, but that tweet-sized chunk was probably the best it ever had to offer.
Yup. Finally, I "get" it.
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