Twitter and Stuff13 Aug
Ever since I started using Twitter I haven’t updating my blog as much. I’ve read about this phenomenon many times on other prominent blogger’s sites: That the immediate satisfaction of Twitter drains the will for more long-form blogging. I’ve thought about it, and I’m sure that I could take any number of Twitters I post every day and write a whole blog entry about each of those subjects, but it feels like after I Twitter something there’s no real reason to write a blog about it. 140 characters seems enough. I don’t know if this is encouraging shallow thinking on my part or just enabling me to post more spur-of-the-moment and share more overall. I’m still trying to analyze it. I know that as I travel through the day, my mind is more attuned to communicating in “Twitter-speak”, just as, when I’m writing a scene for a script, my mind is constantly searching for character traits or line inspiration. It’s an awareness that has become second nature for me, especially since I can Twitter on my iPhone now (addicted, lol).
I think Twitter is brilliant because it is a very effective form of one-way, selective communication. We’re all being deluged with information on the internet, and the “megaphone” approach seems like the natural way to move towards when communication reaches overload. However, that’s from my perspective, having over 7,000 Twitter followers and 1,000 Facebook friends. Most people don’t deal with the volume of communication that I do daily. If I were just limited to a few dozen friends, I feel like Facebook and MySpace would be much more attractive to me, because I would have the time to really keep up with what each person is posting and use the tools to coordinate more real-life meetups etc. It would be a deeper level of connecting than is available to me, the way I use these services.
If any of you Twitter, especially if you’re new to it, I’d love to hear your thoughs about it and social networking in general, and how you use it in your lives!
