Twitter v/s blogging

I have been twittering a lot recently and that has taken a toll on my blogging. I twitter a lot now and blog a lot less. This blog is about twitter so as to create a harmony between twitter and my blogging :)

What is twitter?
Twitter is a concept of micro-blogging where you need to answer 1 simple question - 'what are you doing now?' how many ever number of times you want. But only one constraint - your text has to be limited to 140 characters (each alphabet, number or punctuation is a character) per post, hence the name micro blogging.

How is answering a question related to blogging?
Though twitter expects you to answer just 'what are you doing now?', people have started posting anything and everything to that question. Sometimes I just post a T-shirt quote that catches my attention at a traffic signal. There are few news agencies which post news highlights as and when they get to know about it. So its fast growing as blogging where people instantly post their views.

How do I micro-blog?
Simple. Create an account at twitter.com. You can now start 'post'ing or sending your posts to your account via various channels -
1. Internet: Login to your account and post a message just like your blog
2. SMS : Register your mobile number with twitter.com and associate it with your account. Whenever you send a text message from your mobile to twitter number, the text message is immediately posted on your account
3. Internet: There are various websites, widgets, iPhone applications etc which provide you alternate ways of posting to your account.

'Twitter' has become synonymous to micro-blogging and also since its quicker to pronounce twitter than micro-blogging, 'twitter' is being used as a verb for posting. All the posts to twitter.com are also referred to as 'twitter-feeds' (similar to RSS feeds), 'tweets' and so on. I guess english is getting richer every day with new words :)

How does my friends read my micro-blog?
Just like any other blog, you can share an url of your micro blog that your friends can visit to see all your posts till date. For example, my twitter url is http://twitter.com/ranjith_ka (or www.ranjithka.com/twitter) Alternately, your friends can also create an account with twitter and start 'following' your twitter posts. Similarly, you can also follow anyone's tweets. The tweets of all your friends you are following will be displayed in a consolidated, chronologically ordered list for your reference. So you dont have to really visit all your friends' twitter pages to see their posts. This is very similar to RSS, and hence called Twitter-feeds.

140 characters are too less to express myself.
You can post a text larger than 140 characters but it will be posted as separate posts each of maximum length 140 characters. Its exactly similar to the SMS on your mobile phone with certain character limit.
Believe me, ever since I have started twittering, my communication has improved and I am able to express most of my views in less than 140 characters. Twitter helps you in refining your communication skills :)

What if I want to post more than text?
Twitter allows you to do lot more than posting text. You can upload a picture for your profile. You can also upload any pictures on twitpic.com and give a link to those pics in your tweets. Also if you ever want to share a really long hyper-link in twitter, you can create a 'tiny url' out of the hyper-link which is actually a compressed version of the really long link and share it in twitter so that you have space to accomodate in 140 characters.

Is there any other cool stuff I can do with twitter?
Yes. There are already a lot of widgets, applications on mobile phones developed for twitter with which you can do a lot of cool stuff. If you are a geek and want to do something on your own, twitter has provided an API with which you can build applications. This API is free of cost unlike the iPhone SDK.

Which is better - twittering or blogging?
I haven't yet figured that out. I might very well never be able pick one of them over the other. But I will list certain advantages and disadvantages of twitter compared to blogging.

Advantages of twitter:
1. Its instantaneous and you need less time to post
2. Since the character limit is well within SMS limit, you can just SMS to twitter
3. Lot of your friends will go through your twitter messages than blogging because its quicker to go through smaller posts (notice the length of this article :))
4. You can choose to get twitter updates from your friends as SMS to your mobile. So you'll always be updated about whereabouts of your friends, what they are doing, eating, thinking etc (ofcourse, provided they twitter :))
5. It can be a really good travelogue
6. Can be your online diary which you can update many times a day with small pieces of info instead of a consolidated post before you go to sleep

Disadvantages:
1. You can not provide a lot of information in tweets. For example I can not post an article like this in tweets
2. I can nott write a nice travelogue with accompanied photos on a single page
3. You will get addicted to twitter very quickly :)

Some tips:
In India, where public WiFi is still a dream and internet on mobile phone is expensive, the best way to twitter is through SMS. But SMS to twitter number in india (5566595) will be charged Rs. 3 per SMS. There are some websites which give you an alternate number to which you can post tweets. They in turn post those tweets to your twitter account using the twitter API. However, you need to share your twitter account details with them so that they can post to your account. So be careful. I have an account with www.vakow.com which gives me a local number to send SMS to.


Follow me at www.ranjithka.com/twitter. Happy twittering.