Here’s a question for you folks who micro-blog on the likes of Twitter and Plurk, etc., and also have your own blogs. I’m not asking the chicken and egg question–I don’t care if the micro-blogging came first. I am curious to know if the manner in which you approach blogging has changed since you started using the other utilities. Bonnie Gillespie posted a pretty comprehensive observation about her experience that got me thinking. I’ll be delivering a workshop on blogging, micro-blogging, and social utilities in a couple of weeks, and so I am actually posing this as a serious work-related question.
It has not escaped me that work and play are overlapping. I’m curious about how that affects you as well.
I’ve noticed that my own blog, from the original one to this revamped one, has undergone several style changes. At first, it was totally reflective and observational, but I’ve noticed a shift in self-awareness as I have gained (and lost) readers and the content that I now post. There’s no question that I’ve seen some changes.
How have you been affected in your writing?
I stared my blog as a way faith sharing and encouragment so most of mine are refelctive and prayerful obs on my life Ive only been blogging a few month so nothings really changed yet.
Mico blog are a way of letting friend know I am around and so are just rants on things i am doing at a given momnet in time.
I alway look on my blog at the Stats And I am noticing patterns in my readership and tend to keep to that stlye of writng and where I can I try and promote it on the micro blog sphere
Microblogging takes too much time and not enough is left for real formal blogging.
Twitter and Plurk take up all the idle time that I could be spending on productive tasks. It’s like we realize that it isn’t a good thing yet it’s so intoxicating and addictive.
It makes us feel not alone and part of a community, in my opinion.
I’m finding that the more I cut back and allocate specific time for Plurk/Twitter that I have more time to do tasks I _really_ want to do.
Microblogging is more addictive because you can get immediate feedback. When you Tweet or Plurk, “Good morning, world” you can get 20 responses in short succession from everywhere around the world. We are a community that loves instant gratification.
One other thing about blogging versus microblogging is that in Tweet and Plurk you can easily friend or unfriend commenters. That ensures that there is a much narrower group of people that can view and respond to your posts. There are blogging applications out there that have filters too, such as LiveJournal, but I will go into why filters and blogs usually don’t mix because it is harder to attract potential “friends” to a blog than to a social network.
Before the popularity of microblogs and social networks, blogs were used to communicate many things – share links, post family photos, provide a soapbox for all sorts of opinions. However, quite a few people created their blogs to find friends and people who shared common values and interests.
From personal experience and observation, I can tell you that I made friends, but there are quite a few stalkers and trolls out there. There is always someone who is out there to exploit people. Blogs just provided another avenue to do it. And the danger of blogs (as opposed to microblogs) is that due to the longer format that it encouraged, good-natured people would unwittingly provide more personal information than was probably safe.
Blogs are more for people who believe they can write something of substance on a regular basis. Microblogs are for people who want to post things like, “My dog just ate my cell phone charger!” And in the process meet other owners of hungry dogs from around the world.
Microblogging is a cross between instant messages and blogs. It provides more flexibility for people to share random thoughts or links to new posts on their blogs.