Nathan Bransford has a guest blogger writing about 21 Things an Author Can Do With Twitter. In the post, she refers to Twitter as a micro-blogging site.
Twitter has been discussed a great deal recently at one of my listservs. It's supposed to help people stay connected by answering the question What are you doing? Over and over again, I guess. I haven't given my cell phone number to most of my relatives because I don't want people bothering me when I'm away from home. I don't use an answering machine hoping that if people can't reach me, they won't call back. Someone wants to know what I'm doing? All day long? That's stalking!!!
On a related subject, I just got through reading an article on slow blogging (thank you, Susan), which appears to be just the opposite of micro-blogging. In fact, the author of the slow blogging article talks about a professor who gave up his blog because it was exhausting. He now "fires off short, pithy comments on Twitter." (Isn't exhausting to be doing that all day long?) He has another blog for "in-depth thought."
The idea being, I guess, that a blog appears in-depth compared to a micro-blog.
The so-called slow blogging movement appears to be about using blog technology to publish anything at all whenever the urge strikes. It sounds as if some people are using blogs as writers' journals.
Though, really, haven't people been maintaining personal blogs under those kinds of conditions right along? Is there really any new movement here?
I don't feel that I'm a slow blogger. I won't read long blog posts, and I don't expect anyone to read one of mine. On the other hand, I've heard that with Twitter you're supposed to be limited to messages of 140 characters. Come on! My grocery lists are longer than that.
3 comments:
Ugh. I find I'm deeply resistant to the Twitter thing, too; I don't even put the "update" on Facebook to answer the question "What Are You Doing Right Now?" unless I have something significant to add -- and I rarely/never do.
I am beginning to feel like a curmudgeon wanting NOT to be so available. A young girl emailed me the other day and wanted to ask a few questions about my books, etc., and listed -- and I kid you not -- sixteen ways -- other than face to face -- to get in touch with her.
I just don't want to be that available either.
I keep reading about writers using these social networks for promotion. They seem time consuming (on top of blogging, updating my website, maintaining a presence on listservs, taking part in blog tours, preparing for appearances of some sort or another--preparing for school presentations can be a lot of work--, preparing the occasional press release, and whatever other types of marketing that might come up), and I know, myself, I'm just not spending as much time writing as I should. I want to see some real evidence that the social networks work for promotion before I take more time for writing to be part of them.
Ah, also, I'm a little uncomfortable about using what I understand to be a social network to market myself. It seems a little...exploitative.
I agree with you about not reading long blog posts or using Twitter. Who has the time? As you can see from the fact that I'm replying to this 9 days after you posted it, I'm far enough behind as it is.
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