Back in April I joined Twitter. Honestly, at the time I had no idea why. I planned on throwing a few links out there and not much else. But then a funny thing happened ... I figured out the power of Twitter.
I figured it out so well, I've even been talking about it on other sites.
For example, today I commented on Daniel Drezner's blog over at Foreign Affairs.com. Drezner's post is about a post by fellow long-time blogger Laura McKenna in which she discusses the state of the blogosphere.
McKenna lists nine reasons the blogosphere is no longer in blossoming community mode. She claims it has become professionalized and niche-based. (By the way, this definitely applies to the sports blogosphere as well, especially since Deadspin changed it's format.)
Although he doesn't come out and agree with all of her points, Drezner does state that "professionalization, partisanship and specialization have hit the blogosphere pretty hard." He also states most niche bloggers are now professionals who add their valued insight to the discussion.
Because Drezner doesn't address the use of social media, I added to the discussion of linking and blogrolls by talking about the effect of Twitter on the blogosphere:
"As a blogger, I've found it easier to post interesting links on twitter immediately than to wrap up a bunch of links in a post. Since my twitter followers consist of my blog fans as well as many others, I have more reach there than if I just posted a link dump or included sites in a blogroll.
What this means however is that I push specific data instead of a whole web site reading experience. I am pushing other blogger's information instead of their communities. It is somewhat selfish, honestly. But communities have moved from web sites to social networking platforms.
The love isn't gone, it's just moved."
I think my opinion on Twitter either makes me a genius or a fool. I'm not sure which.
By the way, follow me on Twitter at JordiScrubbings.
