This keeps happening - the community I need to stay engaged with keeps jumping on new forms of communication, and if you want to stay in tune, you need to jump on too.
This first happened with blogging, and then with Facebook. These I actually don't mind. I like writing and reading blogs, and Google Reader has made it fairly easy for me to quickly digest what's going on.
Facebook is nice because I keep in touch with friends. It's not so much about work but about getting a little more connected, particularly to old friends who I don't see much any more.
But this Twitter thing - I really don't like it. Sorry. I subscribe to someone's Twitter feed because I value their thoughts, but then it's serious drinking from a firehose. Many of these Thought Leaders are just constantly (I mean constantly, like I don't know how they get any work done) pushing stuff onto Twitter, and my head just spins. I just un-followed Tim O'Reilly, I just couldn't take it any more. I tried Guy Kawasaki for less than a day - that was mind numbing.
The problem is, these guys aren't blogging any more. Tim Bray has gone almost completely radio silent on his blog. Now Brian Aker's going to do the same thing. I never hear anything from James Governor's blog any more, but his Twitter feed is really overwhelming, and I had to sign off. It's a bummer, I really like what these guys have to say, but I just can't take it.
Those of you who follow people on Twitter, how do you do it? How do you process all this information, get the gold, and get on with your life? I am at a loss...
There's something else - blogs can have a Quality that Twitter doesn't. A good blog has me laughing or nodding my head or both, and when I'm done reading it, I have this quiet smile and a feeling of gratitude, like I just received something both entertaining and valuable. 150-character blaps on Twitter just don't have the same feel, sorry. So I miss that and am saddened that people are moving off of the blog format.
6 comments:
I check it once in a while and scan over it quickly. If I have time I scan it more slowly.
Recently TweetDeck has helped a bit. http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
With time I learned that you can't follow all tweets of everyone and sadly some things get lost and I sometimes prefer humorous tweets than more serious ones.
Also I now have a pending tag in delicious.com to harvest links from random tweets that I want to read later.
My .2 cents
I do as federico silva - Quick skimming once in a while.
It also helps that I don't follow so many people - only those who seem to have some kind of "ah that's interesting/funny" value to at least some of their stuff for one reason or another.
I attempt to do the same myself - I try not to tweet completely random things (like what I just ate or something, don't think I've done that yet) too much =)
I wouldn't trade my blog for twitter though. 150 characters may be enough to post an amusing URL or a thought, but not enough for anything more "serious", such as this comment =)
This article from TechCrunch might motivate you to move from twitter towards something else..
You seem to have got addicted to it, similar thing happened to me sometime back and I stopped checking latest tweets, as majority of them are being fed by twitterfeed's of people I follow..
Most of those tweets are songs you're currently listening, books you're currently reading, links you bookmarked, etc..
Probably that's something which made me focus back on blogging and learning something new, instead of wasting time telling the world, that I am reading so and so article, etc...
As they themselves (not all) are automating non-sense on twitter..
Hey, Varun. Thanks for the concern, but I'm definitely not addicted. I tweet about once a day and I follow a total of four Twitterers. But the problem is, more and more bloggers are moving to Twitter, and it's distressing to me because I feel I'm losing their voice.
I still much prefer the blogging mode of communication, and personally will stick with that.
When you say "moving on to something else", what do you mean?
@David,
Ok, I got your point..Indeed, many people are moving towards twitter and that article shows the reality..
When you say "moving on to something else", what do you mean?
You have already answered that, its blogging :)
BEWARE: Twitter Gets Hacked, Badly by TechCrunch
Post a Comment