Tag Archives: microblogging

Is *Now* Better?

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Kelson

I spotted something interesting while walking to lunch, took a photo with my camera, and then took a photo with my phone so that I could post it to Twitter immediately.

Then I thought: why?

  • Is it breaking news?
  • Is it going to be any less interesting if I wait?
  • Would it add to an in-progress conversation?
  • Really, is there any reason that posting it now would be better than posting it later?

And on the flip side:

  • Does the photo quality matter?
  • Does it need more explanation than I can provide at this time?

I decided that in this case, it was self-explanatory, and neither the timing nor the quality made much difference. But since I had the better photo, I might as well wait until I could upload it. (Sometimes the photo quality really matters, though: my phone’s photos of that rainbow cloud just weren’t worth the effort, so it’s a good thing I rushed back to the office for a better camera.)

There was a time when if I wanted to post a photo online, I had to finish a roll of film, send it to a photo lab, wait for them to develop it, and then scan the print. I really like not being limited by that, whether it’s because I’m posting about a current event like Comic-Con or an election, or just because I think something’s fantastic (or hilarious) and really want to share it.

Sometimes it’s really useful to be able to post photos online instantly. Other times, it’s worth asking: Is now better?

A bit of craziness: I wrote this post in June 2010, about this sign. Then I decided it needed a bit of work before I posted it…and forgot about it. Interestingly enough, the post is still just as valid as it would have been a year ago, and it demonstrates that sometimes, now isn’t better, even if it’s not worse.

Of course, it also demonstrates an advantage of posting immediately. There’s no chance of forgetting about it that way!

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Why Link Length Matters

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Kelson

Twitter writes that link length shouldn’t matter, but the zillions of URL shortening services out there show that, for now, it does.

But why?

There are two main reasons to shorten* a link:

  • There’s a technical limit, such as SMS message length or email line width.
  • You expect people to manually enter the URL.

Right now, with Twitter messages limited to 140 characters and links forced to share that space with the rest of the post, URL shorteners are critical. But they’re working on a plan to accept longer URLs, and specifically shorten them for SMS messages. The full link will be available on the Twitter website, desktop clients, and other platforms that don’t have that hard and fast limit.

That will cut down on the demand for shorteners, but they’ll still be useful.

For one thing, there are other microblogging platforms out there like StatusNet.

For another, there’s email.

IIRC, the first URL shorteners launched because email programs often break up really long lines, including really long URLs. In plain-text messages, that leaves links not just unclickable, but inconvenient even to copy and paste, because you have to copy each line separately and paste them together. This will continue to be an issue as long as people continue to put visible URLs in email.

And then there’s the human factor. It might not be easy to remember http://is.gd/cGE8V, but it certainly takes a lot less time to write it on a scrap of paper than http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/07/hard-to-port-eject-goose-eject/.

Which of those URLs would you rather type on your keyboard? Or worse, on your mobile phone?

*In this case, I mean making it really short and cryptic. There are plenty of reasons to keep links readable and sort of short.

Posted in Computers/Internet | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Do You Fix Old Online Typos?

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Kelson

I always feel somewhat embarrassed when I find a typo in one of my old blog posts, and try to fix it. I’m a little less concerned with forum posts, since they tend to be more ephemeral anyway, and I should probably treat Twitter updates and Facebook status the same way, but I’ve made my share of “Oops, I mean to say ____” posts.

How about you? If you stumble on one of your own online posts and find a typo, what do you do about it?


The poll is open through June 8. And yes, I know there’s a typo in the question. I didn’t notice until after several votes had been cast, which meant that Twtpoll won’t let me fix it. :-(

Posted in Computers/Internet, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Tweet Cleanup Complete

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Kelson

Okay, so it took a few months more than I expected…but I’ve finished the Twitter digest cleanup on this blog that I started last August.

I’ve deleted redundant or trivial items, split some digests by topic, tagged, categorized and titled the rest, fixed typos and expanded abbreviations, reformatted quotes, links and lists, imported photos, and more…all in an attempt to make the archive a little more useful.

After trying to unify some of the more eclectic mixes of unrelated one-line remarks and links, I’ve decided it’s time to stop automatically importing “tweets” to the blog. Sure, the digests maintain quantity, but I think it’ll be better to keep the quality up instead. What makes a good status update doesn’t always make a good blog entry, and I’d frequently find myself either staying up late to edit that day’s “Line Items” post or rewriting it the following day. (Plus I was always worried about a bug in Twitter Tools that would cause a duplicate post about 30-50% of the time.)

I think the blog will be better off if I copy, expand or skip stuff from Twitter at my own pace and put it in a more suitable format to begin with.

You can follow me on Twitter at @KelsonV.

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Perspective

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Kelson
  • Having one of *those* mornings. On the plus side, I’m not the one who flipped his car on the freeway. #
  • Writing effective link text – an old article, but worth revisiting. #
  • Oops! Was so focused on figuring out WHY random Japanese characters were replacing letters in Twhirl that I forgot to take a screenshot! #

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Tweet Cleanup in Progress

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Kelson

Following through on my thoughts on blogging with Twitter, I’ve started going through and cleaning up the imported Twitter digests made over the past 10 months. Some of the things I’m doing:

  • Rewriting titles to be more meaningful than “Line Items for YYYY-MM-DD”
  • Rewriting post slugs for the same reason. (WordPress will remember the old URL and redirect it, so it won’t break incoming links.)
  • Adding tags and categories
  • Reformatting single-item lists as very short posts.
  • Reformatting links and expanding shortened URLs (which I’ve been doing for a while now).
  • Pulling the “Powered by Twitter Tools” link from the shortest posts, generally those with only one or two items, so that it doesn’t end up dominating the related-posts data.
  • Removing redundant items. No need to keep, for instance, a link to an article when it’s followed by a post with detailed commentary on the same article. Or a link to a phone photo that’s followed by a post embedding the same photo, or one of the same subject taken with a better camera.
  • Removing really trivial items. Though I’m not always sure where to draw the line.
  • Fixing, replacing, or just dropping dead links.
  • Update: Uploading photos to show them inline instead of linked. Especially when the original link is dead.

I’ll be updating a few posts at a time for the next week or so, but it should be manageable once I’m caught up.

Meanwhile, I’ve separated my LiveJournal from my Twitter account. There’s no sense in maintaining two archives of ephemera, so I’ve decluttered my LJ: Any “Line Items” that didn’t have comments are gone, and the few that did now have proper titles, tags, userpics, etc.

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Rethinking the Twitter/Blog Connection

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Kelson

For most of a year I’ve been using Twitter Tools to link my blogs to Twitter, both announcing new blog posts on Twitter and creating digests of Twitter posts on the blog. The benefit of announcing blog updates on Twitter is obvious. Some of the reasons to pull things the other way include:

  • It reminds your blog readers that you are on Twitter.
  • You still have something new even when you can’t write a new post.
  • You have your own archive, in case Twitter goes out of business, loses its data, or just won’t let you search old posts.

In cleaning up old digests, though, I’ve come to realize that some tweets just don’t offer much value as blog entries. Sometimes it’s redundancy, and sometimes it’s just that what’s posted just doesn’t stand up by itself.

Not Worth Blogging

Some examples:

Blog post announcements. – The actual content is already on your blog, so you don’t need an extra post linking back. Twitter Tools already filters out the ones it generates itself, but every once in a while I’ll make an “in case you missed it” tweet.

Conversation fragments. This is sort of like preserving half a phone call.

Pre-blog posts. – Sometimes I’ll post a brief thought on Twitter, then later that day (or week) I’ll expand on it. There’s not much point in keeping both the rough draft and the final.

Dead Links. – I’m really not sure what to do with these. The worst ones are the photo posts, since Phodroid seems to have either taken down or moved all its old content. When I post links to the blog I can usually add some commentary that’s worth preserving, but with Twitter you often don’t have room for both description and commentary, and you have to pick one. “This looks interesting” followed by a 404…isn’t interesting. Update: I realized I have the photos on my computer. So I just tracked the photos down by date, looked to see what fit the description, and uploaded the photo to the blog post.

Decisions

At first I figured I’d switch this blog from a daily digest to a weekly one (like I do at Speed Force) so that the Twitter posts don’t clutter up the blog too badly. Then I realized that a daily digest does have an advantage: at the rate I usually post to Twitter, a daily post is more likely to consist of posts on a single theme.

I briefly considered adopting the weekly link round-up format used by Great White Snark: manually-selected highlights. It requires a little more work, but in the end it’s probably more valuable to blog readers than a full record of everything I’ve posted on another service.

For now, I think I’ll keep things the way they are both here and at Speed Force, but be a bit more aggressive on cleaning up the auto-generated digests. Here, that’ll probably include deleting the occasional post.

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Short Copy & New Spring

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Kelson

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5 Things I’ve Learned About Twitter

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Kelson

For the longest time, I figured Twitter was little more than a social toy. But after signing up two months ago, I’ve completely changed my view. Here are five lessons I’ve picked up.

1. There are many ways to use it.

Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?” Some people answer that, and post things like, “eating dinner.” Some people ignore it and post other thoughts. Among the uses I’ve seen:

  • Running commentary throughout the day.
  • Random thoughts.
  • Announcements, particularly bloggers announcing new posts, or news sites announcing new articles.
  • Hey, look at this link I found. (The classic linkblogging post.)
  • Conversations with other users.
  • Even a story told one line at a time.

It can replace a blog, or complement it.  Mine started out just as another feed for updates, but I quickly realized I could post small stuff on Twitter and save the blog for the long posts like this one.

I’ve seen some people who post 20 times a day, and others who post once or twice a month.

2. Writing short posts can be liberating.

You don’t need to think of a catchy title. You don’t need to worry about structure. You don’t need to worry about fully developing an idea. And the rapid-fire nature of the site gives you a sense that you’re only worrying about now. No one expects you to be profound. All you have to do is jot down your thought and fire it off.

3. Writing short posts can be frustrating.

One of my high school teachers used to quote this adage: “If I had had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” It’s easy to ramble. It’s hard to edit. And it’s really easy to run into that 140-character limit, especially if you’re including a link (even if you use a URL shortening service like tr.im).

Sometimes I think what I want to say is short enough to fit, but I find myself spending several minutes trying to rephrase it, use shorter words, cut out unnecessary phrases, and, if I have to, abbreviate words just to cram it into that tiny space.

On the plus side, the result is usually very concise.

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