Jan 24, 2009
How Twitter is Changing my Blogging
I signed up for Twitter because I heard it’s a great way to keep track of news and to share information. So far it has delivered. I find helpful links, share my own, and interact with the 60 or so people I follow.
The hardest part to get used to is the 140 character limit for each post, or “tweet” as they call it. I eventually conformed, and have since loaded the Firefox TwitterBar plug in to make it easier to post throughout the day. I also loaded an extension to my Windows Live Writer that automatically sends updates to Twitter about my blog posts. Connecting Twitter to Facebook means I don’t need to post the same thing twice.
As I use TwitterBar, I have actually learned to tweet well below the 140 character limit. Suddenly 140 characters seems luxurious.
Now I’m beginning to wonder if a word limit would help my blogging a bit–force me to condense my thoughts into brief posts instead of rambling down the page. While there always will be a place for long blog posts digging into important topics, Twitter hints that we can say just as much with a lot less.
200 words seems about right.
200 words. I like that! Thanks for the analysis and advice. I think this might actually help me get back into blogging more — I won’t feel like I have to write a 1,000-word essay!
BTW — Are you familiar with TwitterTools or some of the other Twitter plugins you can add to your site? There’s some good stuff out there.
Thanks for the Firefox add-on!