Richard Bailey has an interesting thesis: Twitter has saved blogging.
It’s based on the idea that the blogosphere was getting dull because people were churning out blog posts of mediocre quality. With Twitter on the scene, Bailey said Twitter has become the place for quickie posts, allowing bloggers to write better and less frequent.
I wish Bailey’s thesis was well-grounded but it’s not accurate. While Twitter is chock-a-block with inane brain farts (e.g. “My dog looks sick”), it hasn’t done anything to reduce the amount of noise within the blogosphere. As far as I can tell, there’s still mediocre blog posts with little or no insight to add humming along.
Why?
Blog posts are easy to write and publish. To pump out a 500-word post – or a series of 500-word posts – does not take a lot of time or effort. What’s difficult is writing a 500-word post that features some thought, insight or a nugget an idea. What you’re seeing is far too many press release rewrites – cut and paste jobs that masquerade as blog posts.
Twitter hasn’t saved blogging; it’s just another place where bad bloggers can make even more noise.
For thoughts on how Twitter can complement blogging, check out Can’t Stop the Music. Meanwhile, Paul Jones writes how Twitter ate his blog: “Twitter has eaten my blogging energy; it’s taken on a lot of the function that the blog should, could and occasionally has had.”
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One Comment
IMHO, Twitter, and social bookmarking, has usurped the original intent of blogging: sharing quick posts, ideas, and, above all, links to other content. Somewhere along the way people decided to use the blogging platform to publish longer works, personal journals, and, of course, make money.
Technically, I don’t think Twitter has saved blogging – it’s stolen a lot of the original purpose of blogging (i.e. web logging). However, it’s certainly given bloggers a lot to talk about.