Thoughts on Twitter (hijacked from a comment)

I started this musing on Terry’s blog. I follow Terry on eduspaces, on twitter, and on his new WordPress blog (set up after the kerfluffle at eduspaces.net from December through March of this year).

I follow a few people on twitter, and I like to follow them on their own blogs also. Some cross posting goes on. For example, here you can see a twitter widget in my sidebar. I frequently see tweets that announce a new post (which is interesting, because sometimes I see the tweets BEFORE I get the post in my rss aggregator).

Terry’s post today is one of those. I saw his tweet on the BBC story and then later saw, through my aggregator, that he had posted on it. I “clicked over” to read it in full and commented at length. So I thought I would re-post my comment over here and perhaps develop my thoughts more in time.

I find twitter interesting also. So far my observations are that it seems to be a lot more personal than the blogs I follow. I follow several people on their blogs AND on twitter. It seems to me that when blogs first started, many of them were about “what I did today”. My guess is that blogs that “held up”, or are still active over a long period of time are more geared toward thoughtful reflection, news, and substantive issues (at least to the author). After all, how much navel-gazing can most people stand? To have a real conversation or feel that you are reaching people, you must soon branch out beyond yourself! (Well, unless you are a movie star. I guess there is ENDLESS fodder in celebrity lives).

So will twitter follow? Right now, I see a lot of tweets that are stream of consciousness and much to do with “I am at Starbucks”, “I am stuck in traffic”. I really LIKE the tweets with links, such as “I found this cool new website”. There is a thriving development environment producing tweet managing software–seems like a new one every day! (another thing you can follow on twitter, since posting sources are embedded in the tweets). So I am interested to see what the future brings. Will microblogging influence blogging? Or will tweet managers make twitter more like WordPress?

I think I have just inspired myself and I had better go post this whole rant on my own blog! : )