Friday, June 25, 2010

Why people tweet instead of blogging

Doc Searls is on a well deserved vacation in France. He was unable to tweet because of the fail whale, but noted that he could still blog. This got me to thinking about why people put up with the stovepipe system that is twitter.

Marketing folks love twitter because they can use it as a way to broadcast without being accused of spamming. It's hard to criticize a tweet, because they are only 140 characters, and viewed as throw away. They also get picked up based on keywords, and thus avoid the reputation filtering that people get when choosing blogs.

This is yet another place where the application of Gresham's law is appropriate. When you search by keyword, you get spammed, because the good tweets get drowned out by the bad.

I think twitter is best used with a carefully selected list of people to follow. This reputation based system is further enhanced when the people you wish to follow can re-tweet something, and thus spread good ideas faster. The hashtag and saved searches, on the other hand... are only good for flash use, as they will eventually become spambait.

That's my take on it... now back to my sickbed. Thanks for reading.

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