How Twitter Killed my Blog

Twitter is an amazing technology. The ease with which one can share ideas, resources, and network with people you otherwise might not have met is (I think) unparalleled. As with any new technology, however, it has come with a cost — it has nearly killed my blog.

For some time, I used my blog as a place to publicly chronicle things and ideas that I want to remember. Looking back (and hopefully forward), I can see the benefit that blogging had. Its forced reflection brought me to strengthen some deeply held convictions. Blogs are great for that kind of stuff — deep reflection, perhaps with a light amount of network.

Now, it’s just too easy to compress an idea down to 140 characters, or worse yet to quickly post a link with little or no commentary. The benefit has been social. As a shy but opinionated person, Twitter is a perfect medium.

With all of this in mind, this post marks another shift in this blog. Stuff on the rest of the family has been moved to more appropriate places (Facebook wasn’t around when we started, and our great photos are on their way to Flickr). To highlight the change, we’re also changing to a theme that heavily emphasizes text.

That’s what Thinking Out Loud will be about for the next phase: deep reflection. To do that (efficiently) calls for some writing.

Thanks for reading!