Aug

17

Blogging = Long-Form Twittering?

August 17, 2007 |

Hugh just posted some very interesting thoughts about the relationship between blogging and the world of Twitter/Facebook/Jaiku etc.:

I remember Robert Hughes, the great art critic saying in his wonderful book, “The Shock Of The New” that the Conceptual Art scene that emerged in the 1960s-1970s was actually good for “Painting”.

Why? Because with everybody else scattering bits of string around gallery floors and calling it “Art”, or covering themselves with butter, rolling themselves in the grass and calling it “Art”, the only people left painting were those, as Hughes put it, “who still actually wanted to paint”.

And paint they did. Hence the big painting revival in the early 1980s. Artists like Julian Schnabel, Francisco Clemente, Basquiat, Keith Haring etc.

I feel similarly about blogs. With new tools like Facebook and Twitter springing up, there’s no need to have a blog unless you really want to, unless you really want to devote that kind of time and effort to it.

I think that is a pretty good explanation to explain where blogging stands right now. However, we don’t yet have a meme-tracker that can cover Twitter/Jaiku/Facebook etc. the way TechMeme does or a Twitter search-engine like Technorati.

I, personally, am too lazy to read through every single Twitter feed of the people whose blogs I follow. Maybe I should think of Twitter as the dark back-channel of blogging. Good ideas will gestate into blog posts through these short form posts. Who knows, maybe over time, we will think of blogging as long-form Twittering (or tweeting?).


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