I’ve seen it said by people here and there that Twitter is microblogging. Where blogging is sharing your life, thoughts, opinions and insights, Twitter is sharing the same thing but on a more intimate level.
When blogging, you can write entire articles to express yourself. When twittering, you only have 140 characters – less than a text message on your cellphone. You share parts of your life as messages to your friends and followers, as you’re doing it, rather than writing articles about it.
You learn to be creative. Those that are following you are doing so because your Twitter bio says you have similar interests to them, or your Twitter home page shows that you say things that are of interest to them, or they just want to build up a network of people that they can share with and learn from.
People don’t want crap sent to them, regardless of the medium. They still want information, entertainment, value… So if you’re not doing that on Twitter, then you’re not going to have as many followers as someone who IS doing that.
I had 140 characters yesterday to write about how, while laying in bed because of my cold, Spike (the recently-traumatised cat) didn’t see me move my foot under the covers while I got myself comfortable. As a result, he thought something was at the bed, so he took about 2 minutes to slowly travel from the top of the bed to the bottom of the bed, carefully stalking something that might be there. When he finally got to the bottom of the bed I moved my foot again, which startled him, but he was convinced that wasn’t the cause of the original noise, so he continued stalking back and forth along the bottom of the bed. He was there for about 10 minutes, looking around the floor, the bed, everywhere – searching for this elusive prey he was convinced was there.
I had to twitter about it, but with 140 characters, it was a challenge. I ended up writing:
My foot moves under the covers, cat thinks prey’s at the end of the bed. Like a lion, it slowly searches for it. Confused, it finds nothing
For me, it’s fun to write something creative, that tells a story in only 140 characters… Of course, not everything is about that. For example, my last tweet just a few minutes ago was:
listening to Enigma and Enya on a lovely Sunday morning. How refreshingly relaxing! 🙂
Some tweets are involving yourself in communication with others, exchanging messages, replies, etc, about whatever the topic is that you’re interested enough to involve yourself with.
The point of this post?
Twitter is microblogging. If you enjoy this blog of mine and you’d like to know more about what’s going on with my life, Twitter is where you’ll find out.
So I hope to see you following me soon, sharing your own life with me, and enjoying the life I share with you. 🙂 Click on the bird at the top left of this blog to start the ball rolling.
Thanks for reading! Please add your own thoughts below.
Don't forget to subscribe for new posts sent to you by email!