Has twitter killed my blogging?

Do I blog less because I find it easier to write a couple of 140 character tweets than a full blog post?  I think it may be true.  Or maybe I just feel I’ve got less to say?  Or maybe I feel that since no one reads this shit anyway, why bother saying it at all?

Hashtag Rant

This is a hash -> #

This is a hashtag -> #hashtag

This is not a hashtag -> # <- it’s just a hash.

I’m sick of people on TV and/or radio saying, “Send us a tweet using @someone hashtag funnysaying”.  No.  It’s either, “Send us a tweet using @someone hash funnysaying” or “Send us a tweet to @someone with the hashtag funnysaying”.

Get it?

Hash -> #

Hashtag -> #plussomewords

Twitter / Facebook fail?

Well that sucks.  I noticed a few days ago that the Facebook Twitter app had stopped updating my Facebook status, and started making wall posts.  Didn’t think much of it, just assumed I was missing a new option.  Then I noticed other people saying the same thing.

Did some digging and it looks like Twitter have made the change ‘at the request of the Facebook folk’.  Check out this (closed) bug report,

http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=1627

If I wanted the Twitter app to make wall posts, I’d have done that.  I wanted it to make status updates (so I could update several status entries from one place only).

Not enough people read this blog to start a movement, which is a shame, because I’d like this to go back to how it was.  I’d rather not use a third-party app because Twitter already has my credentials and I’m nervous about using them in other apps, or giving other apps access to anything more than I need to.  Some people suggest the Smart Twitter Facebook app is okay, and if nothing changes I may move to that eventually.

Shame.  And to use the phrase everyone loves, Twitter Fail (or rather #twitterfail)

Not much blogging goin’ on

So my rate of blog posts has slowed over the last few months from the peak of 2008.  You may ask ‘is it the fault of Twitter’, have my astounding insights been dulled and diluted by a desire to spout 140 character chunks of wisdom?  Actually, it’s because I’m playing a lot of Lord of the Rings Online and various PS3 games really.  On top of that we had a June and July from hell madness where we had visitors left right and centre and went to weddings and generally were out having a life.

I think Twitter is to ‘blame’ certainly for a reduction in the 2 line blog posts I would sometimes make and perhaps Twitter is a better place for that kind of thought anyway.

But mainly it takes some minutes to sit down and write a blog post or a movie review (increasingly, for films which have been out for several years and no one wants to read reviews about) and those minutes are at the moment taken up with Lord of the Rings, the PS3, the garden, the house or life.

I’m sure as Autumn sets in and Winter gets a grip on our goolies, I’ll be here more often, shivering out a few words of painful insight that you didn’t want to read in the first place.

Twitter Updates for 2009-02-24

  • bed! #
  • bacon cob and diet red bull, the breakfast of diabetic champions #
  • the worst thing about being involved in a fantastic project and a terrible project, is the horrible one feels even worse by comparison #
  • no gmail for nearly 2 hours now, how will i survive? where have you gone gmail!? where! #
  • yay, gmail is back! #
  • monsters vs aliens looks like it might be the best animated movie of 2009 #
  • just found the perfect wordpress plugin – AZIndex – http://azindex.englishmike.net/azindex #

Twitter Updates for 2009-02-24

  • So, another go at using twitter (second or third major attempt) – what do people use to follow twitter? any recommendations? #
  • Two meetings down, one more to go at 3pm – only 4.2 days until the weekend #
  • grrrr, can’t find the section i’m looking for in a manual, i know it exists, i’ve read it, but can’t find the fsking right manual #
  • now that i’ve remembered how to read, installation of myphpadmin is going much better … #
  • er, phpmyadmin, i have a serious mental block about that name format #
  • ooh, twhirl is very – blue – #
  • very very tired – 5am start with the cats sucks #
  • almost totally over my working day now – so a couple of hours before i go to bed and start again #

Twitter-too

I’m trying Twitter again (you can find me over here), mainly because more of my friends have started using Facebook again and I can update my Facebook status via Twitter, so I may as well use Twitter.  You’ll see updates on the right side bar, and a daily summary of my tweets as a blog post (unless I get pissed off with that feature).

It’s never too early to decide you’re going to be famous and need a Twitter-Policy, so here’s mine, in advance of me being famous and having 300,000 followers.

  1. If you follow me, I may not necessarily follow you back.  Don’t be sad, you’re not alone.
  2. I promise never to write a blog post saying I’ve twittered something or tweet saying I wrote a blog post.  I understand the two audiences are not the same and you can choose which of my streams of pointless conciousness to decide to read and which you don’t, I won’t hate you.
  3. The exception to #2 is that until I get bored, I’ll use the automated feature to collect all my tweets into a daily post.
  4. #3 is because I also promise to stop blogging one line thoughts which should have been tweets, but I still want everything collected in one place at the end of the day.
  5. #4 is really because at the core I’m a narcissistic control freak.

Blogging about blog blogging

I’ve reduced the number of blog categories down to 9 (Fiction, Games, Health, Internet, Life, Movies, News, Politics, Reviews, Science and Technology), although there’s still a 10th category (Uncategorized) as a hang-over from the blogspot import.  I may shrink that down further if I find the Fiction, Politics and Science ones don’t get used much, and I may add a ‘humour’ one.

Alongside that, I’ve tagged posts which had other categories with new tags, based on the category names.  For new posts they’ll probably get a lot more tags, but it’s a start anyway.  I’ve tried to configure the tag cloud in a useful way without having the text be too big, but I run a pretty small font in browsers usually so it’s not always easy for me to tell how it looks for you guys.

I’ve removed the Twitter sidebar, as expected (self-fulfilling?) I’m not really updating Twitter and not finding myself drawn to read it, so having 8 lines of dead text on the right isn’t useful space.