Twitter & blogging: a love story
This list by A Very Public Sociologist makes for interesting reading, not least for me because I scraped into the top 10. Exciting!
It's easy (and so predictable that, oh look, the Guardian have had a bash at a bit of rubbish prolling) to dismiss Twitter as a dreary affair full of dull people who don't add anything to your understanding of the world, but I can only comment on the effect it's had on this blog. If you compare web traffic for this month last year
with this month this year
you can see there are a lot more people here. Now much as I'd love to think that's down to me being spectacularly brilliant throughout the past 12 months and much more clever and funny and so on, I don't think that's the case. It'd be wrong to attribute everything to Twitter either, but I definitely think it's helped - not just through my own shameless self-promotion on there, but also through other people being able to find the kind of articles they want without having to rely on the mainstream media to dish them up.
When you're trying to cultivate a bit of a readership, or at the very least get more of the sort of people who'd like to read the sort of stuff you write through the turnstiles, I think it's helpful to have a way of letting people know what you're up to - and the immediacy of a link on Twitter is a great 'read it now' incentive. I reckon if you are a keen amateur scribbler like me, or like the many others I've happened upon thanks to Twitter links, then it's hard to underestimate the power it has. The mainstream media don't get that, of course, because they couldn't care less. They just assume we come stumbling through the mist up to their trough every morning to feast on what we're given.
A lot is being made of the looming general election, of course, and the role that Twitter will play in it. Blogging and tweeting won't affect the outcome, of course, but they will provide an alternative backdrop to the tiresome and straitjacketed world of the mainstream at that time - and I'm looking forward to that, if not the result itself. In the meantime, I'll try and catch up John Prescott. It won't be easy, but I'm determined!
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About Me
Hello. I'm a Bristol-based writer and soon-to-be-redundant journalist. You can read more about me and the Enemies site here, or follow me on Twitter. Email me if you like - antonvowl at live dot co dot uk
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December 30th, 2009 - 16:28
Cheers for the link.
I think Twitter has boosted my audience growth, albeit much more modestly than yours. But what it has done is transformed my experience of the internet completely. It acts as an entertainer, news feed and aggregate of a swath of opinion (depending on who you follow, obviously) and is, in my opinion, indispensable as a tool for putting your work out there.
So yes, if you're not on Twitter give our gracious host a follow – and I wouldn't say not to a punt either
December 30th, 2009 - 17:24
The Guardian article reminded me of those comment pieces a while back when bemused journos were scoffing at the idea of blogs. ‘Like being trapped with a pub bore’ was the soundbyte that they were fond of. I mean who’d want to read someone’s opinion about politics? Unless it was written by someone who’d been paid to do rigorous research, like Melanie Phillips or Richard Littlejohn for instance?
Now that the newspaper industry is dying on its arse, it is sad to see the MSM is scoffing about new ideas/ broader audience participation. (Though I would point out the irony that Moldova and Iran’s ‘twitter revolutions’ were almost entirely an invention of the MSM professional media, in I think a not-so-subtle code for ‘upper middle class pro-west kids will depose the elected ogres’; not that I care for the Moldovan/ Iranian governments, but the implication that those dissatisfied with elected governments, fraudulent or not, had the overwhelming popularity to depose them was nonsense).
I blog a bit myself, but have ambivalent feelings about it. I initially started blogging because of the utter rubbish that the MSM was publishing about Russia and because I had studied Russian politics I thought I could make some kind of contribution. I was partially inspired by Anatoly Karlin’s excellent Sublime Oblivion website (so visit that instead of my blog if you are interested in Russian issues) which offered lots of facts about Russia, as opposed to the ‘We guess Vladimir Putin will metamorphose into Hitler sometime and massacre lots of people and invade lots of countries and stuff and whilst we have no evidence, we kind of think he shot those dissidents, cause he seems a nasty type’ that the MSM Op eds were churning out.
Through blogging I got to communicate with interesting people from different countries and regions of Britain; but I also dislike reading about politics overall (I'm a Christian Social Democrat, so not much doing in the Brit media anyway) and have no aspiractions to be any kind of political 'thinker'.
My own feeling is that newspapers have failed very badly, and whilst only professional and well-funded organisations can deliver first-class journalism, that is not to say that professional and well-funded organisations WILL deliver first-class journalism. A lot of it is very poor and badly researched. I get the impression that nepotism plays the biggest role in selecting journalists. Why on earth did the Guardian spend money on nurturing the ‘talent’ of Harry Phibbs? I suspect it is because his view that Social Democracy is close to Fascism is a view that Guardian editors are more comfortable with than any old left ideas.
It would be great if I found professional newspapers as interesting as the regular blogs I visit, but I think that politics and media have become a cult in Britain.
So whilst The Guardian/ Indy are 'professional left wing' publications, I far prefer reading this blog to any of the regular Guardian/Independent op eds; it gives more laughs anyway.
December 30th, 2009 - 17:51
Hard to overestimate, I think you mean. If its value were hard to underestimate, then its value would be close to 0.
With love,
— Pedants Anonymous.
December 30th, 2009 - 18:30
I love the first comment on that Guardian article:
Zerotolerance
29 Dec 2009, 9:09PM
I assume you're blogging on CIF in an ironic kind of way.
I agree with you, and think that the best outcome is that the mainstream media won't continue to dictate the tone.