Twitter Is Broken & Blogs Are Dead

Twitter is broken and blogs are dead is not the sort of comment I expect to overhear when I am out wandering among the people.

No food in the house, spring cold still kicking my ass so I head to the deli to grab some Matzah ball soup and make a stop at the local coffee shop.

Never been to this one before, it is not a chain so I poke my head in and find myself in the middle of college students. Snooty hipster barista rolls my eyes when I tell him I want something that will put hair on my chest and kill this cold.

Somewhere just behind me I hear Twitter Is Broken & Blogs Are Dead.

Should I Care Who Said It?

My ears perk up and I wait to hear an explanation but that doesn’t come because someone else is talking far too loudly about where they want to go on Spring Break. Does it matter? Do I care who said it and why?

Chances are I won’t because it is not profound, insightful, novel, useful or unique.

He is not Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki or Seth Godin or any of the other 12 Internet names people sometimes know outside of the blogosphere.

But even if he/she was I wouldn’t react to that kind of line, hell I would be disappointed.

Disappointed because all that has been said, is being said and will keep being said by people who are unable, unwilling and or incapable of independent thought.

Besides, I am a cranky curmudgeon and I don’t believe any of that.

Twitter isn’t broken and blogs aren’t dead.

Copyblogger is making a mistake by turning off comments.

Why?

Ask people about how Twitter used to be and they’ll tell you about the great conversations they used to have and how it has turned into a broadcast channel.

Some of that is true but it doesn’t really give you the full picture. Twitter has been used for years as a broadcast channel. Triberr haters sometimes claim that Triberr broke Twitter but it is not true.

Triberr is a tool and so is Twitter. Your usage and utility depends on how effectively you know how to use the tool. Conversations still happen daily on Twitter but you have to make an effort now. You have to work a bit harder but those conversations happen.

If I were a real Jedi I wouldn’t have to load my dishwasher by hand, I would just use The Force and it would happen. But Master Yoda hasn’t appeared on my doorstep so my proficiency with The Force is limited so I have to do it all by hand.

But my hands are pretty good, ask The Shmata Queen who gives a better massage.

The point is sometimes you have to do the work to see results.

Road Trippin’ and Blogging

Amtrak has an opportunity for bloggers now that I wish I could take advantage of. It really does break my heart not to be able to apply for this right now because if you want to provide yourself with some exceptional blog fodder you need to go on a road trip.

I haven’t even shared an tenth of what I could from my travels between Los Angeles and Dallas. Haven’t come close to painting a picture of what and who I saw but I have stories and they need to be told.

Traffic on my blogs continues to increase but comments are down a bit. If you look at time spent on page you’d see people are spending chunks of time here but that is not just my blog, it is happening across the blogosphere.

That is because people still like to read for all of the same reasons they always have.

Copyblogger’s move hurts community building.

You don’t build community through silence. Some discussions in the comments section are where you learn the most about a topic and where you discover that JohnnyB is an expert in a field you have interest in.

It is where you see samples of writing and realize that Stacey would make a great guest blogger but that is less likely to happen without a comment section.

Comments aren’t currency and they don’t always advance the conversation, but when they do they are golden.

Twitter Isn’t Broken & Blogs Aren’t Dead

If you were trapped on an island and all you had were a hammer and screwdriver would you stare at them and wonder what you can do with a tool that bangs nails and one that twist screws or would you start to think of other ways to use them too.

I know what I would do and it wouldn’t be limited to just one way to use each.