I blog. I tweet. I read blogs. I read tweets. I’ve been doing this for a while now 
Lately though, I’ve been noticing that people are blogging less, just like me. They are trading their blogging for more and more tweeting. Matt Dickman, David Armano, Steve Rubel, Peter Kim, Joseph Jaffe, and many of my other favorite blog authors seem to be blogging less. It’s not just the frequency of the posting that’s changing. The quality seems to be going down as well. SPECIAL NOTE: This isn’t an attack on any of them; just an observation that you can choose to disagree with. There are exceptions. Jeremiah Owyang, bless his heart, keeps up with his blog and tweets really well.
Tweeting is easy. Often times it doesn’t even require any serious thought. You can tweet simple things like what you’re reading, a link you came across, or ask a basic question.
Blogging on the other hand requires a great deal of thought. Well for me it does. You have to pick a topic. The topic needs to be something interesting and desirable. From there, we need to develop the content to support the topic. That often requires research to substantiate the point of view.
Effort. Blogging requires effort, it requires an investment in time. It often takes me an hour to identify a topic, write my point of view, pull the research (when needed), and then enhance the point of view. In that 1 hour I can easily read through a few hundred tweets, write about 25 of my own, respond to 50 or so tweets, and flag enough content to follow up on for the next day. Tweeting just doesn’t require a lot of effort.
I’m continually amazed at the signal to noise ratio of people’s tweeting habits and their blog habits. My favorite example of this is Jason Calacanis. I follow Jason on twitter. For the last 2 weeks I’ve been categorizing his tweats into two categories: USELESS and USEFU. Jason’s ratio was roughly (I’m rounding) 115 to 1. Think about that. I have to read 116 tweets, just to get 1 gem. Contrast that to Jason’s new email list distribution, which is nothing more than a private blog. Those emails/posts rock. They’re well thought out, on trend, and 100% useful. In my opinion he hasn’t missed yet. He hasn’t offered one useless post. You can see the posts here; he’s started posting his email as blog entries.
It’s clear that tweeting and blogging are different forms of communication. They can be used complimentary. It’s not about picking one or the other. They’re used for different reasons. But, that said…I feel a sense of concern for the future of twitter. If the ratio for the quality of tweets remains low and twitter is simply airspace to talk about what you’re eating; can it survive? I see so much promise in twitter. I want people to realize the role they have to play in the twitter eco system. There’s a certain level of responsibility we all have in keeping the eco system afloat. I think we all need to acknowledge that responsibility.
It’ll benefit us all.
Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer.
I’ve podcasted (ironically) about this as well. I think it’s less about blogging vs tweeting (or e-mail) or even the maturation of blogging as a platform, and more about the fact many of the bloggers are actually doing “real work” now and are just too busy to blog…
Personally I think my ratio of useful:useless has improved somewhat (my posts on Motrin, the big 3 automakers); that said I’ve been doing a lot of “linkety-link” myself i.e. just providing summaries of key posts, articles, reports, insights etc.
I’m not sure it’s a good thing though….blogging is still the most valuable way b2b tool out there and many of the reasons why the list you mentioned established themselves in the space are still very much in play. That said, it certainly has become an uber-cluttered marketplace.
Tweeting, on the other hand, is just easy…and by easy, I mean QUICK.
So is one necessarily better than the other? Not at all, but by the time I’ve taken to write this comment, I could have tweeted twenty times about the sublime, the ridiculous and maybe….just maybe, one gem
Well written and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Setting the height of the useful bar for either channel varies by person, but it’s no doubt higher for blogging than tweeting for everyone. Which eventually leads to a monetization question for Twitter…and the prospects look murky. Would love to hear your thoughts on how to make the money flow – in addition to the content.
@Peter – Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The monetization question is a big one. Adding in contextual ads won’t really cut it in the long run. The “content” if you will, needs to be so desirable that I’ll pay $1.99 a month just to participate.
When Twitter Grader came out I was genuinely excited. The concept of being able ot score tweeters seemed like a logical next step, but it also provided a mechanism for helping newbies sift between signal and noise. As I wrote here, I still believe that a simple thumbs up/thumbs down button for each tweet would be a simple yet effective method of keeping people honest.
http://www.thekmiecs.com/marketing/twitter-grader-and-making-twitter-better/
Looking forward to reading more great thoughts on your site and via twitter.
@Joseph – As a long time reader of your blog I think your content has remained great, but your frequency of posting has decreased. It can’t be easy to travel like hell, maintain the full time job, and allocate time to the blog. I’m also sure you’ve got another book in the works
The responsibility piece is key and it works both ways. I often read this blog http://gobigalways.com/ a few months back the blogger stopped posting all together. I went from irritated by the lack of content to genuinely concerned. When finally he emerged, he bared his soul to apologize for the lack of content and explain that he was getting a divorce. Ouch.
I instantly felt “small.” For a few weeks I had contemplated removing him from my iGoogle feed because of his lack of comittment to his readers. To find out the personal situation and the reason for lack of blogging, well I felt crappy. It’s made me rethink alot of things.
Keep the good content flowing, regardless of how often it comes, and I’ll keep reading.
I couldn’t agree more. I struggle with topics now to write about on my blog, why? Because I explore these topics in realtime as they bubble up on Twitter. I’ve had some great 140 character conversations that would be better served in a blog post-that now get chewed up rather quickly on Twitter. I’m not sure what the answer is to be honest.
Adam,
Interesting observation. Some might agree and others disagree. But Twitter may not be a sole factor. Many of us have gotten spread thin through commitments and travel that it’s hard to keep up frequency. As for quality, I’m still blogging for myself as much as the community, so one of the ways I measure quality is through the visual thinking I’ve done. I’ve had some really good ones over the last year.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7855449@N02/sets/72157606844282993/
Thanks for a post like this though as it’s a reminder that people are watching and they go where the value is.
So twitter ‘is’ evil after all.
@David – couldn’t agree more about the demands of travel. The beauty of twitter is how easy it is to participate while you travel. I think you still turn on great posts. It’s one of the reasons I’m subscribed to your feed and read just about everything you write, even when I don’t agree with your POV
I’ve enjoyed your visual expression feed on Flickr. You do a great job of sharing. As I look at blogging vs. tweeting one of the prime reasons I think we need to reinvigorate blogging is that blogs are now trusted/approved sources of data to reference. I’ve often pointed to posts from you, Kevin Rose, Avinash, etc. and been able to use them as reference points with clients. Tweets, because our how niche twitter still is, are much more difficult to justify as a credible source of information. That will change over time.
I’m not sure I notice this and haven’t noticed a drop in quality on those sites. Might be my personal opinion, but those people especially use the separate platforms for completely different purposes.
@Marc – I’ve seen similar things. Many of my more thoughtful posts originated from a dialogue I watched or participate in on twitter. Twitter provides a great springboard for inspiration.
@ Mark – Not evil…well ok, maybe a little bit evil.
@Adam – totally agree on personal opinion. I encourage you to look at the first 20 posts by some of your favorite authors. Then look at the most recent 20. I’d bet my hat (it’s a nice one, though not as nice as David’s) that the frequency has gone done, the length of the post has gone down, and perceived value has gone down.
This doesn’t mean they aren’t providing value. For some of my favorite bloggers, this is like MJ going form a 36 point per game scorer to a 32 point per game scorer. In scoring less he rebounded more and played better defense. If you will he became a better all around contributor.
The same could be said for all the people I referenced. Matt Dickman provides a tremendous amount of value on twitter and his blog. I learned about the umbrella site via his blog. His contribution on understanding Facebook’s audience was amazing. The writing of that guide took far more time than the actual blog post. The quality came in the work he compiled, not the post itself. Well for me it did.
Surely one of the delights of social media is how your interest in specific social media applications grows and wanes over time.
I am so in to Twitter at the moment as a way of learning how to develop a community. But tomorrow, it could be that I am back to Delicious and FriendFeed. I don’t feel guilt about this at all!
From the other end, as long as those I follow continue to deliver their thoughts and ideas via whatever means – blogs or Twitter – then I feel content. If one of them is less good for a period, that is just fine with me.
As for Peter Kim. I have been collaborating with him over his list of companies using social media to market themselves. Both our blogs and Twitters have been crucial to that process. So social media is not just about thought-leadership. It is also about interaction whatever the medium.
So, Adam, I admire your posting enormously. I just think there are positives as well as negatives in the situation you describe.
@John – I couldn’t agree more about the waxing and waning. Here’s a post from a few weeks back about that topic http://www.thekmiecs.com/misc/blogging-vs-tweeting/
As previously noted. I think Peter is great. I subscribe to his feed. I read his blog. I follow him on twitter. I find him to be a great resource.
While on the whole, social media is not about thought leadership, do not people like Jason Calacanis, Scoble, etc. have a responsibility as so-called thought-leaders to provide, well thought-leadership? I’m legitimately asking the question. I get more out of David’s, Matt’s, Peters, and Joseph’s tweets than I do out of Jason’s, Pistachio’s, or Scoble’s. I’m actually really disappointed with their offerings. But, for every 115 tweets Jason offers about Mahalo, he then provides one great link…it’s what keeps me following him.
I hope my post didn’t come across as being critical of the contributions of people like Peter. Totally not my goal. If it did, my apologies. I was really trying to explain the correlation between the rise of twitter and the frequency and quality of blog posts.