Don’t Twitlonger—get a blog

By RickMacMerc On December 7, 2009 · 5 Comments

The beauty of Twitter is that whatever you post has to fit into 140 characters. If the idea you want to express requires more letters than that, you have to be creative and that creativity is a message all its own.

Are you the type to use text messaging abbreviations (aka “TXT”)? They cut down the number of characters you use in your tweets by replacing words like “you” with “U” and expressions like “as far as I know” with “AFAIK.” And if you use such abbreviations in your tweets, that tells me something about you.

Don’t believe me?

If you saw Selena Gomez or any of the other Disney teen stars using text message speak in their tweets, what would you think? You’d probably think, “They’re young and part of the thumb-typing culture. Typical. Not surprised.” Right, but what if you saw Dame Elizabeth Taylor tweeting something like, “ll of u hu r wotchN Kathy Ireland on DWTS 2nite… plz vote 4 her. d # S on d screen. She’s so gorgES, isn’t she!”? You’d have a slightly different view of the actress than you started out with…or you might suspect Shaquille O’Neal had started ghost writing her tweets. Either way, how you tweet what you tweet says something and is of value to your followers. Don’t deprive them of that.

The TwitLonger service bills itself as ”an easy way to post long messages to Twitter without the need to write a blog post” I say, don’t bother—get a blog. You could probably use one anyway. Write what you need to there and link to it on Twitter. Just like tweeting in TXT, using TwitLonger tells me something about you too…you don’t quite get the beauty of Twitter.

I hope you discover it.

5 Responses to Don’t Twitlonger—get a blog

Tweets that mention Don’t Twitlonger—get a blog « The Inner-workings of the Merc Mind -- Topsy.com says:

December 7, 2009 at 8:12 pm

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dino DeMilio and Rick Yaeger, Rick Yaeger. Rick Yaeger said: IWOTMM post: Don't Twitlonger—get a blog http://blogs.macmerc.com/rick/2009/12/dont-twitlonger%e2%80%94get-a-blog/ [...]
Janis says:

December 7, 2009 at 8:39 pm

Very good idea Rick! Kind of a duh moment for those of us with blogs that haven’t used them consistently as we should for this very purpose!

I assume “AFAIK” is “as far as I know”…or is “fas” a word I need to know for Twitter speak? ;->
Josh Oiknine says:

December 7, 2009 at 8:47 pm

I get the idea of a tweet being 140 characters (SMS is 160) but these days if you want to send an SMS from your phone that is more then 160 characters long your phone will just send 2 message. Most people will be none the wiser.

I don’t see the need for a stand alone service to do this for twitter but i could see other places where if you did write a blog (or longer message) and wanted to post the first few words along with the title, 3rd party apps should do what twitlonger is doing and shorten it for you with a link back.
Stuart Gibson says:

December 8, 2009 at 1:43 am

But here’s the thing. I made TwitLonger because the stuff I share on Twitter isn’t stuff I’d want archived in my blog. It’s usually throwaway stuff, or stuff that’s directed to a single person. Primarily, for me, it was a way to explain technical information, usually about CSS or PHP, with someone who I know only through Twitter. I’m not going to write a blog post about that, because that’s not what my blog is about. Think of it as the difference between Flickr and TwitPic. The stuff you put on TwitPic is silly, throwaway stuff that you’re probably not interested in keeping or having in your Flickr stream, which is usually reserved for photos you really like. The “geeks at a coffee shop” pictures are relevant only for the life of the tweet, you don’t want them on Flickr. Same with TwitLonger.

There are also a number of people who don’t want to maintain a blog, maybe don’t have enough to say that it’s worth the hassle of setting one up (and, let’s face it, there are already enough abandoned blogs out there). TwitLonger makes it really easy for them to, occasionally, go longform with their Twitter followers. This is made easier still when some of the most popular clients have support for TwitLonger built in and can pull the long tweets directly into the timeline without the need to open a web page. On mobile devices, especially, this is great as it cuts down on load times and doesn’t have to try and fit the whole page content on the small screen.

Now, you could argue that it gets misused, abused and overused, which I agree with, but I specifically ask people to think before using it (http://www.twitlonger.com/about#point). I *very* rarely use it myself, I made it to scratch an itch and I encourage people to avoid using it when they could express themselves in a more concise way and keep it under 140. Sometimes, though, just sometimes, TwitLonger is exactly what you need.
RickMacMerc says:

December 8, 2009 at 12:29 pm

First, thank you so much for the comment.
I totally get what you’re saying as TwitLonger being the bridge between Twitter and a blog for times when email is something to be avoided. What I’ve been writing about lately has been mainly centered on using social media to build up exposure online and make a name for yourself…the personal branding thing. If that is a person’s focus, TwitLonger should be avoided. Avoided in the same way that tweeting what you’re having for lunch should be avoided: don’t make it a habit, but special occasions do arise where nothing else will do.
I think we’re in agreement really.