Twitter is Not a Micro-Blogging Tool

If anything, as a blogger I find it insulting that Twitter is even considered to be in the same field as blogs or even micro-blogs. The idea that someone can send a 140 character twitpitch or let the world know where about in some city street they are is considered to be blogging is stupid and devalues the hard work that most bloggers do everyday.

Twitter is Not a Micro-Blogging Tool

Wonder why this guy is so angry or making such sweeping generalisations?  "hard work that most bloggers do everyday"???  What's that about?  Every so often I have a random wander through the Blogger blogs that live near mine - and I tell you what, there really aren't that many who would fit into his description of blogging.  They can be trivial, they can be dusty and abandoned, they can be personal, they can be... they can be anything, to be honest.  Yes, some are of a journalistic quality or serve to link colleagues / create communities - but there really isn't some benchmark that blogs attain which something like Twitter can't.  So, people use Twitter for some stuff which has a fairly low level of academic quality / worth... so what?  One could argue that it's about building community and securing a place in an online world just as blogs or social networking can afford that possibility etc.

I know I've been really dismissive of Twitter in the past, but it's strange to hear people applying quality standards to the thing they like (blogging) and dismissing as worthless the thing they don't.  Andrew Keen's "Cult of the Amateur" springs to mind on reading this article...

PS  Have now signed up for Tumblr as a result of reading this article.  Wonder what use I'll find for it...

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