My original title for this post was ‘Twitter hinders globalisation’ but then I realised it was a bit too sensationalist for this blog.
Once upon a time, when blogs were all the rage and Twitter was a nothing but a twinkle in Biz Stone’s eye, people would speak of the global collective of the blogging medium. It didn’t really matter what time in the day you published a blog post because, unlike Twitter, the immediacy of ‘the conversation’ wasn’t that important.
Timely, yes. Immediate, no.
You could publish a blog post at 8 o’clock in the evening and through the night someone somewhere on a different timezone than yourself might leave a comment as you were sleeping. You get up the next day, check your email and there sitting in your inbox would be a couple of comments for you to read and comment back on.
On some occasions you might email the commenter to thank them for taking the time to respond and perhaps let them know that you like their blog and had since subscribed. And over time a relationship would have formed via comments, links, emails and Skype IMs/calls, and in some instances you might be lucky to meet up with this person if you both happened to be in the same country as each other. Real relationships were made.
Twitter has changed this. It now seems, to me at least, that your Twitter username is considered more important than your blog’s URL because (the Twitteratti think) blogs are too slow and too formal. I agree that Twitter’s immediacy can be a good thing in terms of real-time communication. However, immediacy comes at a price – and that price is the hindrance of timezones.
I guess what I’m trying to say is your general day to day experience of using Twitter probably entails communicating with people from your own country. Which isn’t a bad thing of course but, although slower, blogging is more of a global conversation as opposed to a localised one like Twitter. I think the relationships made through blogging are more personal too. I mean, really, you’re *following* 1,000 people? Are you really?
I think as I write this I’ve just convinced myself that Twitter is actually quite crap and if I want to have a real-time conversation with purpose and meaning I’ll pick up the bloody phone … just kidding but unlike this past year I think I’m going to spend more time writing this blog than on Twitter from now on.
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
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Mihnea
I don’t agree with the concept of “Twitter is the new blogging” either – and I don’t consider any of them to be a better alternative to the other – but I beg to differ when it comes to it being drastically localised.
What I’m trying to say is that while it may be *more* localised, it certainly doesn’t limit you to interacting solely with other tweeple from your country.
For example, given that Europe is essentially split into only three time zones, the principle clearly does not apply for me when it comes to keeping up with the crowd typing away in the Old Continent. I think you’re referring to the fact that Twitter is rather ‘continentally localised’ (if that makes any sense).
Danny Whatmough
Hmm, tricky one. I kinda agree with what Mihnea says: I actually find that Twitter helps to transcend geographical boundaries. I often logon to Twitter in the evening when there are many US users on.
I do take your point though about feedback mechanisms and how these differ from Twitter to Blogs. I’m just not sure that regionalism is the key factor affected by the differences between the two…
Stephen Waddington
There are three dimensions here – channel, time and location. Some studious individual somewhere is surely thinking through this issue and will come up with a communication hierarchy to show how these different electronic channels inter-relate and work together. In fact I’m surprised that you haven’t proposed a model already. We could call it Davies’ Hierarchy of Electronic Communication Channels.
Stuart Bruce
The key bit of what you say is ‘Twitterati’ – Twitter is still very much for the minority (we’re all in the bubble), the reach of blogs is far greater – to many who don’t even know they are reading or commenting on a ‘blog’.
Chris Norton
Interesting post Stephen. Twitter is more of a personal community than blogging. A blog post is up online for ever and is indexed in the search engines so people can can find them using Google. I actually got a comment on a post I wrote 10 months ago the other day which shows people still read them.
Twitter on the other hand is immediate but is gone and often. Although I know services like Tweetscan can help with this issue if you are actually formally tracking something.
I am with you – blogging is still the number one for me although Twitter can be fun for actual conversations but often I will just Skype someone as its more personal.
I hope the new company is doing well.
Andrew Bruce Smith
@Wadds Shurely a framework rather than a hierarchy?
carltonreid
Twitter is good for instant, short braindumps and for passing on interesting URLs that would you might pass on to others via email but usually don’t get round to doing.
I’m with Danny Whatmough on timezoning. I’ll do Brit stuff during the morning and will then switch to US mode from about lunchtime.
I edit a news website for the bike trade and can’t get Brits interested in Twitter. American industry types, however, seem to ‘get it’.