Monday
Aug172009
Evolution of The Rebel Twog
Monday, August 17, 2009 at 06:14PM
I find myself conflicted: To Blog or To Twitter, that is the question.
I love the social medium of Twitter, which is as much of a surprise to me as our recent enthusiasm for NASCAR, or the new dependence on Granny Goggles (magnifiers - although oh-so-stylish!) since my 40th birthday...so go figure, old dogs & new tricks notwithstanding.
Twitter is instant interaction with like-minded people (and a few scantily-clad, big-bosomed women and some get-rich-quick-scammer types amongst the followers as well - I block em when I see em, but for the most part they lurk quietly on the followers list, I don't know why). Communication coming or going anytime, day or night, limited to 140-character snippets. There is no way to get carried away with myself or digress wildly off-topic (which I am known to do, on occasion). I love the limitation, the challenge of saying what I want to say in 140 keystrokes or less (or 280 characters at the max, if you use a double-tweet format, like @11AliveNews in Atlanta).
At the same time, I love my blogs, The Random Rebel Coffee Blog and Rebel Reviews, and I have loyal readers there who can't/won't/don't want to do the Twitter, which is perfectly fine -- I'm not quittin' you!
Over the summer, with Camp Mommy, I experimented and developed The Rebel Twog -- a hybrid of daily Twitters (Tweets, for those of you in the lingo) and then a weekly Twitter summary re-cap on the blog, a digest version, if you will, for the non-Twittering. It has worked for me, to some extent, although I am appalled to later read the crazy Twitter-speak of abbreviations and Twitter-grammar to fit in 140 characters or less. It's not nearly as Twitter-cool, transferred to the professional writer blog, so I'm working on that.
Rebel Housewife Readers have responded positively to the Twog concept -- thank you! Twitter is ephemeral -- there and gone an hour later for all practical purposes -- and that's fine, for the most part, since a research firm recently determined "40% of Tweets are Pointless Babble," but there is some stuff I'd like to keep, particularly book reviews, suggestions and info, funny anecdotes or philosophical musings -- which, okay, might be pointless babble to some, and they are free to un-follow or un-subscribe at any time.
I will try to clean it up a bit in the digest summaries. Some readers have encouraged me to go to Facebook, but there's no going there for me -- TMI, too much information and an even bigger time-suck (new word!) than the time-suck that is Twitter. We expressives have to find balance somewhere!
I love the social medium of Twitter, which is as much of a surprise to me as our recent enthusiasm for NASCAR, or the new dependence on Granny Goggles (magnifiers - although oh-so-stylish!) since my 40th birthday...so go figure, old dogs & new tricks notwithstanding.
Twitter is instant interaction with like-minded people (and a few scantily-clad, big-bosomed women and some get-rich-quick-scammer types amongst the followers as well - I block em when I see em, but for the most part they lurk quietly on the followers list, I don't know why). Communication coming or going anytime, day or night, limited to 140-character snippets. There is no way to get carried away with myself or digress wildly off-topic (which I am known to do, on occasion). I love the limitation, the challenge of saying what I want to say in 140 keystrokes or less (or 280 characters at the max, if you use a double-tweet format, like @11AliveNews in Atlanta).
At the same time, I love my blogs, The Random Rebel Coffee Blog and Rebel Reviews, and I have loyal readers there who can't/won't/don't want to do the Twitter, which is perfectly fine -- I'm not quittin' you!
Over the summer, with Camp Mommy, I experimented and developed The Rebel Twog -- a hybrid of daily Twitters (Tweets, for those of you in the lingo) and then a weekly Twitter summary re-cap on the blog, a digest version, if you will, for the non-Twittering. It has worked for me, to some extent, although I am appalled to later read the crazy Twitter-speak of abbreviations and Twitter-grammar to fit in 140 characters or less. It's not nearly as Twitter-cool, transferred to the professional writer blog, so I'm working on that.
Rebel Housewife Readers have responded positively to the Twog concept -- thank you! Twitter is ephemeral -- there and gone an hour later for all practical purposes -- and that's fine, for the most part, since a research firm recently determined "40% of Tweets are Pointless Babble," but there is some stuff I'd like to keep, particularly book reviews, suggestions and info, funny anecdotes or philosophical musings -- which, okay, might be pointless babble to some, and they are free to un-follow or un-subscribe at any time.
I will try to clean it up a bit in the digest summaries. Some readers have encouraged me to go to Facebook, but there's no going there for me -- TMI, too much information and an even bigger time-suck (new word!) than the time-suck that is Twitter. We expressives have to find balance somewhere!
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