Twitter Vs Blogging: 13 Comparisons

Since I started Tweeting over 2 years ago, I have found that I'm less and less inclined to blog. I don't know if this represents and essential laziness on my part or an adjustment to the wiles of the Internet or some combination of both. Certainly Twitter isn't really designed to allow deeper thoughts or leisurely discussions or anything beyond the edges of my ideas. While this might be good for worldbuilding (See the Turkey City Lexicon for the reference), is it equally good for critical thinking, career building, networking, promotion, joke telling (of jokes that are longer than knock knock jokes), essay sharing and so on and so forth?

So I thought I might do a quick comparison between Twitting and Blogging for the Writer, and I invite you all to add your thoughts in the comments, since this is a blog and not Twitter and you can do that instead of having to hang around Twitter all the time checking your @ replies to see if anybody said anything.

1) Both of them have dumb names. Twitter. Blogs. They're just dorky words. They can't help themselves, I guess.

2) Blogging takes more thought but not necessarily more time, because some people (not naming names!) are on Twitter constantly.

3) I have a lot more Twitter followers than Blog readers, but does anyone really pay attention? I'd say the Blog readers are more likely to, but Twitter...not so much.
4) Blogs create a repository of your cleverness with fewer injokes, retweets, comments about your dinner (ie painful mundanity that is reviled by some), and half-viewed discussions that people who check out your archives aren't going to "get".

5) Twitter is easier to do from mobile devices or when you're in a hurry. Multitaskiness!

6) You can illustrate blogs without requiring your audience to link over to another website, because we've all heard things about how you shouldn't follow links in Twitter (if you haven't heard things, now you have!).

7) Blogs are all about YEW, while Twitter is all about who just said the funniest thing and got it retweeted. And that is rarely YEW.

8) Both blogging and Twitter can be frustrating if you're yakking away and nobody's listening. BUT you're more likely to get the thrill of "being noticed" on Twitter or get the chance to chat with people you admire than the chances of them dropping by your blog about, I dunno, Twitter vs Blogging.
9) Twitter helps you exercise your brevity muscles. What are brevity muscles? Well, when your evil editor tells you to cut 20K from your novel, you will use these muscles a lot.
10) Blogging exercises your writing muscles in a way that ensures your brevity muscle doesn't become the only working muscle in your arsenal. But then again, so does WRITING :).
11) Your mom probably likes your blog more than Twitter, unless she's on Facebook, but we're not here to talk about Facebook.
12) When you happen to be in need of a wee bit of social interaction, which those of us who spend most of our time alone with our computers can be, Twitter provides it much better than blogging.
13) The problem is, if you do both wholeheartedly, that's half again as much time away from your writing. This isn't really a comparison so much as a complaint. BOO. Why isn't there more time in the world?

So what are your thoughts? Which one do you like better and why?

Jody W.
http://www.jodywallace.com/ * http://www.meankitty.com/