I signed up for Twitter in December of 2008 and have been exploring/examining its utility for myself since then. Midway through my fourth month of using it I don't have a good feel for whether it is really helped me.
There are aspects of it that I really like. It is a useful tool as a source of information as well as for disseminating it. But I suspect that it is doing more to hinder blogging than to help it.
Based upon personal experience I find that things I would have blogged about are getting swept aside and turned into a simple tweet. It appears to me that some other bloggers are experiencing the same thing.
However since I haven't conducted any sort of poll this might not be entirely accurate. I don't know.
I have also been careful not to let myself get too wrapped up in it. There is only so much time in the day and far too many things that serve as distractions or unintentional time sucking devices.
In fairness I should add that I feel a bit like I am in the middle of the dog days of blogging. I still do it and I still enjoy it, but it has lost a bit of the shine for me. We'll have to see if that is temporary state or something else.
What do you think of Twitter?
2 comments:
I find Twitter works well for certain kinds of blog posts but not for others. Lots of business-oriented folks and technical-folks (who are seeking technical information for business reasons).
So it's hard to grab people to read your kinds of posts, which are more human interest.
On the other hand, if you tweet the full title of your posts, like this:
posted "Tweeting About Twitter - One Blogger Speaks" (link shortened here) - please add your thoughts
I might click on it if I happen to be in Twitter at the time.
I find to attract followers, you have to tweet about what they are interested in, not just your own posts. Which might be harder to do on a blog of your kind.
Have you ever tried playing a writing meme? You get lots of visitors via memes.
You make some excellent points. I think that the broad focus here has had an impact upon the number of commenters.
But in regard to Twitter what I have really noticed is that I haven't written posts about some things that I normally would have.
I am not prepared to give it up. I just need to take some time to consider whether I am going to adjust how I use it.
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