Perusing through recent blog articles in my feed reader, I spy many articles about Twitter–but few about Twitter.
Like leaves on an autumn day, these blog posts appear to talk about the same thing at quick glance, but they’re quite different.
Confused yet? Peer with me into the brains of other bloggers.
Julie Roads (@writingroads) compares Twitter to a golf course but opts not to define either side of the analogy. Rather, she writes:
There we all are hanging out and enjoying ourselves–we all know what we do for a living, we all know we’d love to do business together or learn from each other–but it’s secondary, it’s unspoken. And still the business gets done. Oh, and we’re spared the horrible clothes.
She’s writing about how Twitter can be adapted into layman’s terms but she’s not writing about the social networking site.
From the framework of public relations which he knows best, Todd Defren (@tdefren) also writes about Twitter and how everyone watches your tweets:
It is perfectly human to kvetch about how tired or unmotivated or hung-over you are to your friends and even the clutch of co-workers in your immediate vicinity. But do it on Twitter, and you’re casting your fate to the winds.
Note how Todd explains a way he views the microblog, but he’s not writing about Twitter, either.
Reading other bloggers and their subject matter–Jason Baer (@jaybaer) and the art of live tweeting, Andy Beal (@andybeal) and how one tweet cost someone her job, Geoff Livingston (@geoffliving) and the starkness between Twitter and Facebook–it should be painstakingly obvious that folks are blogging about Twitter without blogging about Twitter.
When Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel) and Dave Fleet (@davefleet) went back and forth on the intersection of tweets and insults, you can see how they blogged about Twitter without really blogging about it.
It’s no different with Kim Woodbridge (@kwbridge) blogging about a Twitter tool to track cursing, Laurel Papworth (@silkcharm) blogging about Twitter management, or Danny Brown (@dannybrown) blogging about twittering for charity.
You may recall I abstained from blogging about Twitter last month.
I spent the month blogging about the importance of Yelp and TripAdvisor to small businesses, my reluctance to buy a Kindle, the necessity of WiFi, and a glance at 127 countries reading my blog.
Now that March has come and thinly disappears, my archive indicates I’ve only blogged about Twitter a few times since. I learned a valuable lesson last month that I see echoed in my fellow bloggers:
It is very easy to write about something without writing about the thing at all.
Photo credit: bweisner
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Good observation. I hadn’t thought of it like that before. I think part of the reason may be that pretty much everything that can be said about Twitter itself has been said. The conversation has switched to the nuances of its implementation and use rather than the basics.
Dave Fleet´s last blog post..A Brief History of the Web
I’m lost. I blog about what Twitter is a lot. But I prefer to use case studies and discussion tools to highlight how it’s used, rather than what it is. Is that what you mean? Cos at the end of the day, a site that is now in the top 100 most visited websites is worthy of investigating from all angles.
By the way, my basic post is here. Everything else links back to that one. My Twitter for Business courses are built on case studies cos the basics are grasped pretty quickly… *still puzzled by this post*
Or the fact that it has become such a part of our daily lives that analogies come easily…
Kami Huyse´s last blog post..How To: The Secrets for Gaming Twitter Are Free, and Why It Doesn’t Matter Anyway
Interesting angle. I agree with Dave. There’s so much out there already about what Twitter is, and it’s overall impact, that I (for one) prefer writing about beyond the obvious ways to maximize its value.
You don’t see much written about Tivo anymore in general, but a lot written about Tivo hacks. Same premise, I believe.
Also, for those that use it consistently, Twitter can become such an important part of work and personal life, that many bloggers seem to need to provide some sort of context or explanation or allegory or analogy.
I think these many views of what it is and how it can be used are fascinating, and speaks directly to the philosophy that Twitter is what you make of it.
Jason Baer´s last blog post..The Double Life of a Live Tweet
Reading this, one could say you’ve not blogged about Twitter either, though you failed to define what Twitter “is”, so one can judge the writings of the others. In taking the same course of thought you appear to be engaging, you’ve blogged “about” Twitter no more than they have, you’ve only blogged about bloggers not blogging “about” Twitter.
Danko Ramone´s last blog post..This spam tastes “funny”
What does it mean? When a previously novel technology becomes a natural means by which we communicate we don’t talk about the technology anymore, we communicate. We don’t talk about how the telephone works, we make calls. We don’t talk about how television is a miracle, we watch a show. Twitter is getting there.
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