Blogs v Twitter

I think I've managed to get back to my blog a bit recently, after it almost having gone in to deep freeze when i twittered/facebooked and had only enough time to do quick updates. Terry Wassall just said on twitter "I'm struggling these days to write blog posts. They turn into essays so I run out of time and don't post!" I found this had become the case. I have many blog posts in me that I mentally wrote in bed, or away from a keyboard, and never got chance to write up but didn't get twittered either, and things I want to say that are too big for twitter. Then again I want to more permanently home some of the things I've just thrown onto twitter as though it were delicious. Over the last couple of months I've realised I want to find the time more to write more quantatively, if not qualitatively, again, and am making more of an effort.

I'm not sure though, that this is directly attributable to twitter in either direction. I already had run out of time to write (or, frankly read) blogs, but since I can tweet from my phone on the run/way to&from work, I could twitter instead. The topics probablly overlapped only minimally - if I knew what software I could analyse my blog in I would probably find there were few 140xr equivalent postings.

However it would possibly be true to say that since I've been twittering I've read more tweets and less rss of other's blog posts, only going to them if directly linked posts on twitter interest me. I'd be curious to know if others had experienced this. I don't -or only ver rarely- post my own blog posts to be entered on twitter, so I don't encourage that traffic, I've never done that. In fact I've only relatively recently (ok, couple of years, as it were, possibly less) made it so my name appears on my blog, and that was through my twitter feed, which I've since stopped. Although I don't hide my blog or deliberately hide who I am, it's not really either a work blog or one about technology, so advertising it seems unnecessary - friends subscribe and you can link to it from my twitter and facebook profiles if you wanted.

Going back and attempting to blog more is partly a space to reflect, though I currently feel the need to consider a more personal portfolio type space to reflect more openly than I do on my blog - I also contribute very occasionally to a blog a few of us started a couple of years ago to share on our theology course, and I'm aware I should use that more too. Thus although I might have amplified in posts things that have made it to twitter, there is no competition between the two.

So, have I blogged less since I started tweeting? Yes, but not to blame twitter for that.

Have I blogged more/about the same since I started tweeting? Yes, too, because after a gap I've got back into it a bit and possibly either the amount of twitter, or the lack of depth of twitter has helped encourage me to keep it up/get back to blogging.

If we'd done this four five six months ago, I'd probably have said I blog less, and possibly blame it on randomly twittering rubbish instead. But the lack of time isn't caused by or being eaten up by twitter. Now I'm probably hesitantly prepared to say that twitter arrived in my psyche (i had an account for quite a while only using it professionally whilst still facebooking personal statuses) and took over from status-posting in facebook at a point when my blog was running out of time/space/steam. Twitter helped keep me connected through that, and has potentially helped me back to blogging. Or perhaps I'd have come back anyway. Either way, I couldn't rightly feel that I could vote in the poll without skewing the results.

Ooops, there's an essay. Most of my blog posts aren't that long!! Interested for other's views

tags: altc2009  blogging  discussion