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It’s official - blogging is now passée and everyone who is anyone is moving to twitter - .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), so it must be true.

So the move by EllisLabs to drop the phrase weblog from EE2 is a timely move. I think this reinforces what most of us have been doing over the past few years anyway with EE - that’s building websites rather than on line diaries and it’s the diarist’s, or those parts of sites that are diaries, that have moved to other social media. My Space and Facebook have no doubt prompted the shift in on-line behaviour and Twitter has been picked up by the more tech savvy who have their own sites.

I don’t actually believe that blogging is dead as such but should be now looked at as personal publishing rather than an on-line diary. After all the personal publishing revolution is still building but has been subsumed by the professional journalists who have finally embraced the technology - probably because its got easier to use and their respective employers have realised that they needed to put their talent on-line. A good example of this is the BBC’s Robert Prestons blog that broke the recent Bank Crisis in the UK - this blog is now essential reading in The City alongside the Economist and FT.

When I move my own personal site to EE2 I will now be taking the time to reduce my blog posts to long form and in depth articles only and rip out the diary type short comments I have posted over the past six years. This will give my site a smaller but more informative footprint (and a smaller htaccess redirect list!) but it looks like iI will need to fully embrace Twitter - I have an account but have never Twittered (If a blogger blogs does a twit Twitter?) so easy Twitter integration into EE will be embraced - is this why Leslie was asking who Twitters?

I think Twitter is ridiculously overrated. I just can’t get behind it. Maybe it’s just that i haven’t been bitten by the bug yet or find that RSS gives me everything i need so why would i need the 135 character snippet of the full thing? Who knows.

What’s happening there that i can’t get elsewhere?

Jack -

How long did you use Twitter? Did you accumulate a set of friends and/or industry folks to converse with before you gave up on it? If you only used it for a week or so and didn’t really connect with others, I’d say try again.

Just like if you go to a party where you know no one or you talk to no one, you won’t have much fun or accomplish much, Twitter is the same way. It is, in fact, a *social* network, so that’s obviously a key component.

How/why do I use Twitter?

- Keep up with far-off family members in ways I wouldn’t before. “Taking Bishopp out for a soccer game in the park.” Cool, now I know what my bro-in-law and my nephew are doing today.

- Keep up with the latest in my industry - which just happens to be marketing, web strategy, social media, web development, etc. so there is a TON of activity there.

- Getting breaking news. News breaks on Twitter a lot faster than it hits CNN or the major news outlets. It’s incredible and fascinating.

- Broadcasting links or interesting things I’ve read.

- Meeting up (in real life) with people in my area/industry. It remains the only social network I’m on that has resulted in real life meetups and real relationships/friendships.

- Getting business for myself (I’m an independent consultant) or negotiating services. See this article on how I negotiated a several hundred dollar a month service for free for my old employer: http://profy.com/2008/05/09/twitgotiation/ This is just one example. Twitter has, if indirectly, definitely improved my bottom line.

- Connecting with people and promoting a side project of mine, DeGeeked.com, via the Twitter account @degeeked.

- A lot more as time goes on, I’m sure.

I’m not ready to call this the end of blogging, but I am a big proponent of Twitter, obviously.

To a certain extent I am actually with Jack on this one - I don’t yet understand Twitter so I need to spend some time with it. The important thing that I was driving at is the shift on what people are doing on-line now and Twitter adds new dimensions - when I am at work I use letter (very rarely), phone, email and instant messaging for different sorts and levels of communication.

Thanks jtnt for your reasons for using Twitter and they do back up what Wired are saying and have given me some food for thought!

@jtnt I will admit that i didn’t grow any networks or friends on Twitter—for one, no one I know has used it. Ever. And I run development for a progressive web dev firm. None of my friends, colleagues, ex-coworkers… no one. So it feels strange to just start “following” random people when i feel like i eavesdropped their text messages to a buddy.

Maybe it’s just me, but it just feels plain strange. But I’m willing to give it a shot. I think Twitter integrations to EE sites are pretty sweet.

I think Twitter is ridiculously overrated. I just can’t get behind it.
What’s happening there that i can’t get elsewhere?

1 - Amen. Highly overrated, mostly a generational ‘community’ trend.

2 - can’t get behind it because it’s too far behind me? 😊

3 - elsewhere provides more than inane blurbs and snippets

😊

OK but is the point of my original post that ‘things are a changin’? It matters not if one uses Twitter or not but the important thing is that there is a ‘sea change’ going on - it may be too subtle for people to see. Web savvy people are finding that they have less time to post long articles to the web - probably because they are getting older (things get slower - don’t worry about it…) but also because everything these days is at 110% - everyone expects immediate answers so nothing goes unanswered like it used to do. But on the other hand website owners want to let their family and friends know what’s happening - and that my friends is a different communication process.

I’ll agree with that. If my friends and family were on twitter—i would definitely use it. It’s just that they’re not, and it has little value to me. I don’t love it enough to evangelize.

I have received referrals through Twitter.  I have also created working relationships with people in my industry whom I have never spoken with before.  The cost is the time I spend on the service and at 140 characters it isn’t that bad.  The verdict, Twitter has paid for itself in my case.

Additionally, I get updates.  Learn about new things.  It’s an alternate channel.  More often I’m hearing about important updates to my industry through Twitter before I see them elsewhere.

Writing letters is dead long live postcards.