Here's my two character response: NO
A few weeks ago, I came across a Wired article from last fall that announced the
death of the blog, which really got under my skin. Here's a taste:
- "The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook or Twitter."
- "Twitter - which limits each text-only post to 140 characters - is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004."
I'm fascinated by social media trends and I am a new, enthusiastic convert to Twitter. But stating that a platform that allows only for 140 character blurbs is the best way to express yourself is downright crazy - and ironic, considering it's coming from a professional writer. Perhaps the author wishes to rid the world of his non-professional competition in the old school blogosphere?
Yes, I'm a writer, so it's no wonder that this type of thinking irks me. But there's more to it than that - it's the notion that brevity and immediacy supersede the need for clarity and well-crafted messaging, that the best way to express yourself is through pithy bits of info vs. a carefully constructed sentence. We're already a sound-bite world, thanks to advertising, television news, emails, texts and instant messages. Must all communications be stripped down to 140 characters? (And how did Twitter settle on 140 characters, anyway? Never mind, that's another blog post.)
Of course, the implication is that people who apparently shouldn't be writing blog entries SHOULD do much better with tweets. Not necessarily - here's a sample of a recent tweet from someone in the PR industry that I follow. He has a pretty funny blog that I enjoy reading, but his tweets - not so much:
"Empty restaurant manhattan lunch. Workday. Come in looking for party. Fake mait''d: TABLE FOR ONE? Talk about an idiot. 'No. Tble for none!'"
Huh?
So here's a reality check. 140 characters alone will never be able to:
- Build a true connection between your customers and your brand.
- Adequately describe your product or service.
- Inspire your employees.
- Convince a reporter to write a story about you or your business.
Twitter's just the start of the conversation, not the conversation itself.
Speaking of Twitter, you can find me @lizkelly
