Twitter has had an interesting effect on my blogging over the last few months:
Things that used to turn into short blog posts are often being distilled down to a couple sentences and sent to Twitter instead.
Of course, this results in fewer blog posts and more Twitter updates.
The posts that do find their way to the blog are either more in-depth pieces or things I specifically want to receive comments on (like this post).
Any other Twitterers out there experiencing/noticing the same thing?
The exact same thing happened to me. Over all, I think it’s a good thing. My blogs ends up having more quality and I have a voice for all of those little things I want to say without having to stretch them into a thin blog post.
Alex, agree. I describe twitter to my (non-tech) friends as a mini-blog.
Exactly. Twitter is so easy, I use it as a link aggregator. At the end of the day, I have all my tweets gathered in a nice post in my blog (thanks to Twitter Tools, of course).
Twitter also encourages clear and concise writing.
twittter.com/peoriapundit
i thought it would more than it has, honestly. i definitely post fewer of the “[INSERT LOCATION] says hi” useless entries – a blessing for most readers, i’d expect – but apart from that i don’t see it having a whole lot of impact.
i think it’s because i’m not a good enough writer to get my point across in a 140 characters 😉
There is also a Twitter Corollary, wherein a third to half of the posts on the main blog are about various Twitter related issues. 🙂 Actually, Alex has done a better job than many about it.
I’m finding that the same is true for me as well … my update-level posts have simply migrated to a more-appropriate tool.
Yep, for me it cuts down on posts on my personal blog, but not on my business blogs.
I find this to be true as well. Normally I would post about my day when eventful stuff happens, but with twitter, there is no need!!
I actually feel like this is hurting my blog somewhat. I don’t have any desire to become an essayist like Rands and I believe that some of the :scare: humanity :/scare: of my blog is being lost to my Twitter updates.
However, Twitter also encourages me to post things I’d never blog about so sucking the tweets back into my blog as posts doesn’t seem quite right either.
More thought is required.
I felt the same way when I started tweetting but thanks to you, Twitter Tools solved my probs.
how:
On my homepage my tweets show up like yours but I instead of linking to twitter I link to the category that Twitter Tools uses to create the post. I wish I could link to the actual post but I just have to create an asides widget better than how I modified your plugin.
I’d like to call it “The Long Tail of blogging” 😛
[…] used to. Alex King just posted something that pretty much sums up a large portion of my situation: The Twitter Effect. I basically get a lot of my thoughts out through twitter and then feel like I have nothing to say […]
Same here. Although I tend to twitter a lot more then I ever used to blog.
I’d say:
Twitter:Blogging = IM:Mail
Totally agree that this is *an* effect, maybe not The Effect. For me, it’s actually more like a pre-blog, where the ideas/thoughts – the ones I don’t have enough passion-knowledge-chi to write a whole blahg about – end up.