Status of the blog, Twitter and Facebook

As you may have seen, I'm neglecting my blog a little these days. I'm finding that Twitter is standing in for as-it-happens content, but is of course, limited to 140 characters. Therefore, for more in depth posts, pictures and embedded content I will continue to post here in my blog. As I was talking with friends last night, the 140 character limit becomes an interesting exercise in writing. The challenge is to summarize your thoughts and content in just a sentence or two. With the help of tinyurl and some abbrevs and TLA's, Twitter updates can become very efficient and potentially deliver a potent message. I have included my real-time feed of my Twitter updates in the right hand panel of this blog, in case you're wondering what's happening between blog posts.

If you don't get Twitter, let me try and explain it in 140 characters...Twitter allows you to instantly share what you are doing, what you find interesting and what you think with about 8 million people. For those familiar with Facebook, Twitter is just the status part!

There is tons of information about Twitter these days (including a new blog called Twitter Facts I just found) and you're probably hearing a lot more about it these days as celebrities, news sources and sports personalities start coming on board. Some interesting notes: only 35 people work at Twitter; I often hear news through Twitter, before I hear it through other online or traditional communication channels; for many celebrities, Twitter provides a way to disintermediate the paparazzi and junk tabloid press; and the limit of 140 characters stops the rants, rambling marketing BS, and wordy commentary - it just gets the point !

If you're wondering about the credibility of the Twitterer or their tweet, then my answer is the same for many online sources of information. The democratization of the internet, where everyone has a very easy way to provide feedback and comment to anyone and everything, creates a self-regulated internet information source. For instance, if someone nabs a celebrity's name and pretends to be them on Twitter, it will not take very long time for many people to discredit the fake source and educate people on where to find the real person.

However, not everything is rosy in Twitter world. There is an ugly side to Twitter in that it can open up unwanted online marketing channels. You'll notice this when you're happy tweeting away (say about your latest ultimate injury) and you get a notification that jennyhealthexpert has started following you. Now, jennyhealthexpert may be a friend with a weird alias, or someone that legitimately is interested in your health and condition, but more often than not, jennyhealthexpert wants you to follow her so she can tell you about her thoughts or perhaps advertise her services. You have of course, the choice not to follow jennyhealthexpert, and if you don't then she'll likely eventually unfollow you. But, it still feels a little uncomfortable, knowing people are just waiting for you to tweet on a topic that they want to use to market themselves to you !

The other thing that came up this week about Twitter was the use of real names versus aliases. For me, I think I still like to use my alias when publicly posting on my blog and Twitter. I keep my real name for Facebook where the community is better controlled. As a few people have said, it is a little surprising how open people are sharing personal and professional comments under their real name on Twitter. It's probably not that difficult to figure out my real name from my blog or Twitter, but why advertise it ! My friends know how to find me if they're interested in what I have to say, so I'll leave it like this. In case you're reading this or following me on Twitter, and also a friend of mine on Facebook, you may have noticed that I have fewer Facebook status updates these days. This is because the auto feed from Twitter to Facebook now is selective, I get to choose which Twitter updates go to Facebook. I do get quite a few people politely comment that I update my Facebook status much more often than other friends. Hopefully, I'm not clogging your news feed as much these days !

I also use my alias when sharing other things publicly, incl. Flickr and comments on other people's content. On that note, I'm pleased to say that one of my pictures was recently used on blogTO. I wonder how many people on the net are known more by their alias rather than their real name ?

I had contemplated posting "The Big Blog Weekend Update", but instead I'm just going to post individual pieces with titles and labels so readers can pick and choose. Plus I won't feel that I just need to add this one extra thing before I post the big update, so I'll actually get something out. Just remembered another reason I was going to do one big blog...so I could post just one link to Facebook rather than posting a lot of individual links, um.

Well, this little topic took a lot longer than planned this morning, blogs about soccer, Arshavin, Anfield song, ultimate, St George's day, health, money, Travis gig, other music, Contact and Luminato festivals, God poster and cars will have to wait for another day.