Slow Blogging versus Speedy Twittering

A bit late perhaps, but as I am chatting away with a friend who Twitters, I realize one of the benefits of Twittering over Blogging (or any other type of “authoring” really).

“Let me take an exceptionally educated guess: you not actually being a member of the Twitter community? Sounds great indeed; where do I (and, for that matter, the rest of the world) sign up?”

In your dreams and my nightmares. See, one of the principles of successful change management is to, as quickly as possible, achieve success. Reaching that milestone, no matter how small is it, will give people the feeling of being productive and useful. Reaching milestone after milestone, no matter how small they are, is an experience that strongly motivates people to (continue to) do things.

There are many times when I thought of something quick that I wanted to write about, but refrained from doing so because my mind went “I cannot just write stuff down. I will have to take my time and think about it, then write a draft, then spend quite a bit of time reviewing and rewriting that draft into a coherent and complete story”.

“Huh? When have you ever used that procedure for this blog?”

I am doing it even now. So the idea that I had to spend a lot of time to share what I felt was a very little nugget of wisdom was not exactly motivating. Which is kind of insane since blogging was the Twitter before Twitter! It was an easy outlet of whatever one wanted to say online right there and then, quick and dirty! Format be damned! But when blogging became a more serious activity for professionals, the people behind Twitter had to look for the next format where “quick and dirty” was the rule, no exceptions. By limiting it to 140 characters, they have successfully captured, no… abducted the “quick and dirty” feel and complemented it with the “repeatedly strive for quick achievements, no matter how small” concept.

No wonder they called it Twitter: it sounds and means something fast, whereas “blog” sounds slow and its definition reminds me of something slow. If there ever was an alien called “Blog”, you know it would be something big, fat, wobbling with multiple layers of whatever.

“Hey, leave the snark to me! Anyway, abducted is a strong word; I predict a new service that will have even a lower maximum limit of characters reaching great heights of popularity!”

Not an impossible theory. Still, how articulate can one be with even fewer characters? Wait, do I even want to know?

Wobbling Blogger Out.