One of the reasons my post frequency is down is because I use Twitter to share links of what I think is important as well as advertise Time Out on Pirate Christian Radio. Some people choose to “tweet” what they’re listening to or announce that they HAVE THE NEW IPHONE 3GS OMG!!!! or other crazy things that aren’t the most useful to everyone else. Twitter is intended to be a simple tool: you answer one question, “What are you doing?” It’s a one-line quick advertising channel.
Twitter has a “reply” feature, and the temptation is there to carry on a conversation in Twitter. I’m guilty, and I need to stop. 
Twitter isn’t the best place to have a conversation: the 140-character limit is too small, and it’s too easy to come in to the middle of a conversation.
Blogs aren’t going away just yet. Perhaps we ought to revive such things to bring conversations out of the Twitter firehose. Don’t use facebook; that gets blocked by corporate firewalls.
What Twitter ultimately needs is comments, but that breaks the grain of their original design so they’ll never do it. If enough people got on the bandwagon a third party could “glue” an implementation on top of the API, but the bottom line is that micro-blogging != conversing. Admittedly, everyone uses micro-blogging for conversing though!
I really think replies should be reactions, not conversational… but I’m guilty of going against my own thoughts!
BTW… thanks for dropping IntenseDebate!
Quiet, you.
IntenseDebate is awesome.
I was going to try IntenseDebate again, but the complaints after the WordPress 2.8 update stopped that idea. I really don’t like dropped comments.
I think the 2.2 version of the plugin fixed much of those problems.
ID is going to improve and be integrated better with WordPress over time, as it’s now owned by the same company.
Much? I meant many.
*sigh*
I like IntenseDebate, too. Have had no problems with it.
Removing replies sent to people you don’t also follow from your main Twitter stream has basically fixed any and all complaints I’ve had about this.
I tend to send @replies to get a person’s attention or to respond to something in a one-off fashion. (Especially when I want other people to see it.)
Blogs are hard to use for this purpose as there’s no way to have one-half of the conversation on one and the other half on another (easily). I think @replies are a natural evolution of the Twitter environment.
I would agree with that. But when what one has to say is smaller than a blog post should be, but more than 140 chars. and said people don’t use FB, it gets frustrating.
Maybe its just me. But I feel like if I have to send 2-3 replies to say what I need to say, I’m bludgeoning the topic.
See, I use Twitter @replies because I hate Facebook with a burning passion and refuse to use it for anything other than accepting friend requests and posting status updates by using Twitter.
Facebook is good for one thing only: Mob Wars!!!
All the cool people play Mafia Wars.
But Dan, what a novel idea…actually using a blog to say what you think.
I might have to do that sometime. FB and Twitter have led me into the state of “forgetting” to blog. (or sucking up that time like a giant vacuum)
I started this: http://bonusround.ryanmarkel.com – to handle all the little things I thought didn’t belong on Twitter and didn’t belong on my blog.
I’m trying to reduce my Twitter frequency as much as possible to not overwhelm people. I don’t care about overwhelming people with an RSS feed. They signed up for that kind of pain.
That’s kind of intriguing….(I like the Hoover Dam pic)
“You signed up for this kind of pain” is generally the philosophy that I reserve for my marriage.
I’m so Lutheran. I hate that the “refresh” button on Firefox can’t be in the same place as on Explorer
That is one of the advantages of IntenseDebate, if I remember right. I think it auto-refreshes comments.
F5!
CTRL+R :p
My liberator!
i was actually rather unsure about Twitter at first, but it has become very important to me. if for no other reason, am able to keep up with “breaking news,” it has also helped me with job searching. some of what goes through Twitter is dreck, i think having a “comments” section on tweets would defeat the purose of Twitter. Twitter is not a blog, or an online diary where that sort of thing is expected. i for one enjoy reading your tweets, i’m a horrible blog reader, i just don’t have time to read them all. In that regard, Twitter has kind of become a “digest” for blogs, as well.
And yes, it was not by accident that I put my twitter addy in the website spot. follw me @loofrin
Much appreciated. Thank you.
I like Twitter for the news updates and blog links as well.
I try not to have a convo on twitter. One or two replies is generally my limit on that. Twitter is not meant for the verbose, yet some feel compelled to tweet several in a row to get their point across, even within a conversation. That is what blogs and email are for. Especially because I hate it when Twitter crashes from too much tweet-volume. I’m selfish that way
Heidi…yeah, until Shark season is back!!!
I HAVE THE NEW IPHONE 3GS OMG!!!!
HA HA HA U R AT&T’s NOW. You have no chance to survive, make your time, all your base, etc., etc.