Pax Gaea Human Rights World Post

Writing blogs in an era of Twitter

As much as I may have maligned the whole notion of Twitter, I must confess there is something quite addictive and almost compulsive in boiling down your thoughts and opinions to 140 characters. This, they say, is how the new media generation communicates and blogging in the traditional sense holds no value or interest to them.

Of course, Twitter being a spin off of texting, it is only natural that the generations who have grown up with a cellphone as standard accessory would influence how we communicate. And for those of us who have had to struggle just to keep moderately apace of the ever changing world that is the "new media" we do, at times, find the inner Luddite in us toeing lines in the sand as to how much were going to chase each trend that comes along. I'm still putting my money on "My Space" making a come back so that I can joyously puff to all my kith and kindred who migrated to Facebook that theirs was a fool's errand (though, I'm not holding my breath.)

Suffice it to say that when a colleague invited me to join Twitter I initially scoffed but gave in as so many of the people I respect were "tweeting." And I've come to realize that Twitter does have it's advantages and attractiveness that makes it a worthwhile addition to the toolkit of even the most gray bearded of the new media user. As a headline generator.

Which is how I use it. For the most part I concentrate on posting my daily updates to the Pax Gaea Human Rights Report and tweeting the headine of the most current or relevant human rights article to promote the update. This in turn gets reposted on the Red Meat Liberal My Space page thus, hopefully, expanding the potential audience base through retweeting.

Of course, not far down the road, some other 14 years old tech geek will invent the next thing to obsolete Twitter (in fact, I'm sure the more savvy of you are already using the new form.) But, for now, Twitter, My Space and the periodic blog works just fine for me.

I'll broaden further when the need calls for it. In the interim, where's my eight track player jamming a Quadrophonic Wall of Sound?

Labels: Blogging, human rights, My Space, Pax Gaea, Twitter

posted by Dave Carroll @ 3/02/2010 04:34:00 PM