My buddy Zippy Zappy has been recently ruminating over the differences and benefits of blogging about cards vs tweeting about them. I'm not gonna rehash here, as he already did a great job of breaking it all down in his post. I'm just gonna drop my perspective on leading life as a double agent - as both bloggerista and twitter dude.
(Also, as an homage to ZZ's post, I'll be dropping in some unrelated scans from an old-time Beckett that Dennis from Too Many Verlanders sent to me)
As ZZ said, the biggest difference between the two arenas are how much you can say...errrr, write.
My blog has run for a few years, and as the time went on, I found myself blogging less often. A couple of times I even did the hiatus thing and disappeared for a month or two. Part of the reason was this self-imposed feeling of responsibility to blog regularly, and to fill enough space in an entertaining way.
Then came my life as a writer for a Dodgers blog. That became an additional 1,000 words I had to write per week, and I just found it to be too much sometimes. I don't know how Night Owl does it. He's my hero; he's knocking out like 5,000 words a day! Whew!
Then along came Twitter. I resisted it for a long time, but once I checked it out, I was hooked. Messages are short and sweet (I preferred the old 140 character limit) and you can drop in pics or gifs. Perfect for a hit and run guerrilla-fighter like me.
The other great point about Twitter (or not so great, depending on personal and political preferences) is you can drop tweets on any and all topics. My feed tends to be much less about cards, but plenty about the Dodgers and baseball in general, art, photography, funny stuff, and yes - the part Night Owl really doesn't like - politics.
I don't mean to pick on my friend N.O., he's just an example. Some folks want to escape debate and friction on these platforms, and that's a valid position. Believe it or not, I try to hold back on my political tweeting, but some subjects grab me by the throat so hard, that I just can't ignore them. I've lost some twitter followers because of my politics, and that's their prerogative.
Last time I checked, N.O. still gets my tweets, so I'm lucky enough that my friend keeps me around and just sweeps past what he doesn't want to get involved in.
Speaking of being involved, Twitter has really opened up my connections with some of you out there. As ZZ said, he and I talk much more over in Twitterlandia than we ever did in the Blogosphere. I'm also in much more contact and making better friendships with Peter K., Jon from Penny Sleeves, Commish Bob, Mark H, Tony L, Gavin, my hermano Wes, Matt, Julie, and I'm sure a couple of others who, I apologize, slip my mind right now.
I'm a happy double agent. It works for me.
Aloha!
