I just read a tweet, yep that’s right a tweet in which David Armano pondered whether Adam Kmiec’s blog post about the quality and frequency of some notable bloggers is diminshing because of Twitter… is true.
Kmiec mentions that not only Armano, but Peter Kim and Joseph Jaffe are guilty as well of producing substandard quality and quantity. I say he’s right. And though I’m not on the same level as those guys, I see it happening to me as well.
The proof:
David Armano yesterday penned, The world’s shortest blog entry
Joseph Jaffe recently wrote the post titled, “Who gives a shit about toilet paper?”
I’m not using David and Joseph as the poster children here, Adam already did, but I did think it was funny to look at their most recent blog posts. I liked both, but there was some delicious irony in it all. I know there are lots more of us twitter/bloggers out there whose craft might be suffering because of Twitter; and I can without a doubt tell you that I have tweeted wasted? some great blog post topics which have then transformed into some great twitter conversations. My posts are becoming shorter. Any coincidence? They’re becoming more rant-like. I feel like I’m mailing it in some time. Or maybe because there are so many good conversations going on, on Twitter, all the good stuff is being said in real time and doesn’t need to be elaborated on? I’m speculating, but you get the point.
So what happens?
The digital footprint isn’t the same as if it were a blog post. It’s there, sort of, but for the most part it is gone. I’m not sure how to strike the happy medium because I like both worlds. But my blog is suffering.
Thoughts?
Direct Marketing Observations 
I’m not sure that it’s Twitter that’s killing blogs. In fact you could argue that the internet as a whole is killing writing. Many authors have talked about how the medium manages the madness. First it was Guttenberg and his darn printing press, then it was the internet and the immediacy of information and authorship. I think Twitter (and blogs) are just another form of this.
What it all boils down to is that we as readers are going to have: 1) a lot more meaningless (or meaningful) “crap” to sift through as technology progresses; and, 2) more opportunity to recognize truly strong and honest posts, articles, tweets, and entries as they’ll stand out from the masses.
No matter who you think is holding the sickle there are always going to be (and always have been) meaningless posts that prattle on about nothing– I hardly think a broader proliferation of nonsense is truly going to kill “real” reporting/writing/blogging.
-Melissa
I don’t know if it’s killing blogs… There are plenty of things I don’t take the time to blog about but DO tweet about, but then I don’t think I’d blog about them anyway, because I have the attention span of a goldfish most of the time. What I love about twitter is its ability to make me even more ADD than I already am – I can have conversations faster than ever and learn at a way faster rate. Could you imagine having to rely only on RSS, blogs and comments? I don’t want to go back to a life without twitter.
Michelle
PS – thanks for stopping by my blog. Loved your response 🙂
Adam’s post seems like a load of trite nonsense, ripped out of a community college “Communications 101” textbook. does that count for analysis these days?