I haven't managed to get far enough to say much about the book. Although I'm enjoying it, I'm not learning anything new -- but that wasn't really a surprise. It is, however, nice to read someone else's commentary on the phenomenon.
This morning I found an interview with Rosenberg in the current issue of Time Magazine.
I was particularly interested in his thoughts about how Twitter has impacted blogging:
I see it as a good thing. It's redefining blogging as an outlet for things you can't say in 140 characters. And ironically, it's making blogging more substantial. In the early days, blogging was dismissed as trivial and mundane and full of these messages about what you were having for lunch. Those messages are now on Twitter — among other things, of course — while blogs can serve as a public sphere for ideas and a place where people exercise creativity and self-expression.Does Twitter make regular blogs more substantial? I'm not entirely convinced. The statement implies that bloggers now both tweet and blog, separating out their messages. I think blogging still has those "trivial and mundane" messages, although at least in the work that I do those messages serve a purpose. I think I'll hold off here and say more about that in a podcast. :)
I would say yes. There have been many times I've tried to explain something and can't do it in 140 chars. Or a series of tweets with another person have provided blog fodder - or made me start thinking about a topic in a way that I wanted to explore it more fully. Twitter (and Facebook) gives me an outlet for the more mundane messages, and my blog is for more substantial reflection.
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense. I could see how someone who tweets might have a larger idea and take it to a blog. What I don't see is the reverse: someone who used to blog about something mundane thinking "hmm, I can say this in under 140 chars, I should tweet it instead" which was how I read the quote. That said, pre-twitter I didn't see much in the way of really brief posts about what someone had for lunch. The bloggers I follow could (and do) write paragraphs about something as mundane as what they had for lunch or said nothing about it at all.
ReplyDeleteMaybe what I'm uncomfortable with is the feeling that Rosenberg is playing into the (mis)perception that blogging is nothing more than trivial navel-gazing about random details of life that don't matter.