After an initial paroxysm of posting, I find that Twitter is already losing its appeal, now that the shock of novelty has worn off. While it's been fun to microblog, I can't help feeling that it's a bit of a chore to manage two must-update blogs at once (not to mention the less frequently updated auction blog).
Part of me thinks that Twitter might actually be better than Facebook were I ever to take another long walk across the country. You can tweet your GPS coordinates on it, or tell people that you're currently approaching (or already at) such-and-such a landmark, be it a rock outcropping or a downtown restaurant or a Jesus-shaped hay bale.
But such thoughts are merely practical, not aesthetic or literary: I don't appreciate Twitter for its potential to make me a better writer; I see it merely as a means of getting word out when necessary. What's more, I can microblog just as easily here, on Blogger, as I can on Twitter, and since Blogger has a moblogging function, I can hook my blog up to a cell phone and text updates to my blog that way. That is, in fact, what I did while I was out west in 2008. You'll see plenty of BlackBerry posts over at Kevin's Walk.
How long can the Twitter madness continue? Stay tuned and let's find out together. At a guess, I may stop updating on Twitter, but I won't kill the Twitter account.
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In all seriousness, the sort of thing you talk about in this post is exactly what Twitter is really good for. A Kevin's Walk twitter feed would have been ideal.
ReplyDeleteBut no, Twitter will not make you a better writer. In fact, my personal opinion is that it will make you a worse writer because it rewards thought vomit as opposed to careful consideration.
Good point. There's plenty of thought vomit on Twitter, to be sure.
ReplyDeleteKevin