« Hillary, pack it in | Main | Low quality and uncomfortable »

Twitter is the death of blogs

So for the past few months I find myself using the Twitter microblogging service more and more. Maybe you've noticed, as I keep a Twitter widget embedded on Tikkabik.

Twitter, if you're unfamiliar, is a service that lets you post your thoughts in 140 characters or less. Users subscribe to each other's Twitter feeds (called "Tweets") and often use Twitter as a somewhat less-than-realtime chat client.

Twitter is appealing for a variety of reasons. For me, it's because the 140 character limit -- a somewhat arbitrary number that, if I understand correctly, is grounded in Twitter's original roots as an SMS-based service for cell phone users -- enforces an economy of thought and expression that's utterly the opposite of the average blogorrhea you're likely to find.

Having said that, Twitter isn't the be-all end-all of communication. There's still a healthy place for blogs, for longer posts. But for more and more things -- off the cuff observations, anecdotes, humorous comments -- Twitter's becoming the go-to place these days.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)