Twitter made me (not) do it
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It’s been a whole month since I wrote anything in my blog? What happened? (Or rather, what did not happen?)
Well, let’s just blame it on Twitter. Or on the new iPhone. Or on two clients wanting 70-hour weeks from me all month. Or on processing 4 hours of teacher training videos.
Nah, let’s just blame it on Twitter.
Twitter seems to have taken a big bite out of my blogging energy lately.
I primarily use Twitteriffic on my iPhone to both follow and to create new tweets, but I also love Twitterfox (a plug-in for the FIreFox browser) if I’m at a computer (it just pops up a little panel showing the most recents, and lets me quickly twipe a new tweet whenever I feel the need.
But why do I even bother with Twitter? - because I get stoked with a dozen new ideas every day! In the old days, “kids” used Twitter to vacuously and narcissistically communicate “I’m having breakfast” or “I’m on the bus” or “I’m at the coffee shop.” But somehow a large number of busy people realized that not only was this a waste of a good communication medium, but something better could actually be done with it - and now what we do is communicate concepts, places, activities and ideas of interest to our group. Someone might be experiencing writer’s block and need inspiration and put out a call for help that explains the concept she’s working on, and get back a half dozen interesting tangential ideas! Another might have returned from a trip and posted photos - and will put up a tweet pointing to the photos. Someone else will be at a conference and will tweet about each speaker’s primary concept.
You have to carefully pick who you “follow” (whose tweets you subscribe to) on Twitter, but once you have your list tuned well, you have constructed a channel that lets you really stay in touch with the ideas and activities that will surface as blog posts and news in the next 24 to 48 hours. And you get a real boost from knowing what your friends and colleagues are working on and thinking about.
