If it can’t be said in under 140 characters, it doesn’t need to be said. At least that’s my view of the world when I use Twitter.
Sometimes I blog out of courtesy just to let people know I’m still alive. It saves them from having to make the awkward phone call to my wife to ask about me if I’ve been quiet too long. Instead, they can just check my blog and see if there’s any recent activity, and if so, then there’s no reason to disturb me or my wife by inquiring about my status.
Let’s face it, I have a lot of dangerous hobbies, for example, motorcycling, flying experimental airplanes, eating meat, and so forth, and there’s always a chance that I may not be around tomorrow and no one would know what happened to me. With Twitter, I can keep people aware of my most recent thoughts and experiences and not have to write too much. In fact, with my iPhone, I can snap a picture and thereby add virtually 1000 words to any tweet. It lets the people who know me in real life that I’m still alive. Best of all, my Twitter feed ends up over in the right hand column of this blog and so if you come here and find a stale article you’ve already read, you can always find a crumb in the Twitter feed. And that feature is making me a lazy blogger, because I find that I’m not updating my blog nearly as much as I might otherwise.
And if I ever do have anything important to say, I can blog it here and then tweet the link, thereby letting people know that I actually had something that took longer than 140 characters to say. In fact, I think I’ll tweet the link to this entry after I finish it.
You know you’re a bad blogger when you want to start every entry with, ‘Sorry it’s been so long since my last update…’ One benefit of merging your Twitter feed into your blog is that it gives readers some Twitter crumbs on which to nibble during those dry spells.
Now, where’s a Twitter app that periodically tweets my heartbeat? Better yet, where’s the app that posts my last tweet when that rate has gone to 0 for a few minutes….and what might I post in that final tweet? A picture? a URL? Perhaps it will be my whole life’s story reduced to 140 characters.
Are you one of those people who check in here every now and again to see if I’m still alive? What about you? Where may I surreptitiously inquire about your status? I always imagine, probably incorrectly, that some long lost friend or relative is reading this blog, yet I have no way of knowing. If you’re in that category, please, send me an email or call me (my contact info is up there under that link that reads ‘Contact’) and let me know you’re a reader. I’d really love to hear from you… you know… just to make sure you’re still alive. 😉