Monday, January 26, 2009

Talkin' Twitter

Let's take a moment here and talk about Twitter (follow me). Some folks are crazy for Twitter, while others wonder what all the rage is about. Personally, I've been having kind of a hard time describing it to others. Still, I like it a lot, and think that it will - in some form or another - be the future of blogging. I think that most of us are still figuring out just how to utilize their medium. My buddy Adrian from ipickmynose criticizes those who use the site simply for linking back to their blog. He twittered:
honestly, if I want to know when you post, I'll put your blog into my RSS reader, not follow you on twitter. Fast track to unfollowing.
I have to say that I'm inclined to agree with him.

A number of musicians are jumping into the Twitter game, and Drowned in Sound has done a great job of deciding whose worth following - and who isn't. A few of the artists I started following recently - Colin Meloy, Q-Tip, Janelle Monae, and, oh, MC Hammer.

Twitter can be a great promotional tool - I think we still need to figure out just how it can be more than "Eating a sandwich" or "Taking a Walk." Stephen Saber writes that Twitter will be a part of the future in some form, even if it is eventually called by another name:
I postulate that he problem that people have with Twitter is that they are looking at it as if it is the final product of the communications revolution that it has started. Instead, let me suggest that you think of it as the AOL of its era. When AOL launched, it was very much a tool for social purposes that had a lot of features and functionality that could be repurposed for successful business uses. These days, AOL is all but non-existent in the realm of internet powerhouses, yet much of what was embedded in that application lives on today in many of the tools that we all rely on every day.
A recent Wired commentary pretty much declared blogging dead - and it is true that the 'sphere has become quite cluttered. Twitter's short-form blogging is exciting and I am trying to utilize it for the things I don't always get to do on my blog. A fun challenge: Trying to compose a 140-word movie review.

Oh, and follow me.

1 comment:

Allison said...

I can't remember what came first - the Facebook status updates, or Twitter? I have a twitter account, but never use it because I can't link it back to my blog, and hardly anyone I know uses Twitter.

But you're right about status updates in general becoming the wave of the future. I quite enjoyed your review of Revolutionary Road today. ;)