So earlier today I allowed myself to be pulled into a debate over Twitter.  Generally speaking, I am not a fan of using Twitter as a conversation tool.  I decided (as indicated in my comment on twitter) that the conversation would be better held in blog post format.  A couple of ground rules for this post:

1. Pretty much everything here is subjective.  I don’t really intend to sway anyone’s opinion.  If I do sway it, then it’s just by chance.
2. What I do plan to do is better articulate my points since in a blog post I have the space to do that.  Being limited to 140 characters makes this difficult.

Here is the conversation that was had from beginning to end:

jeremy6d: People who knock conversations on twitter forget that there’s not a good alternative for public micro-conversations. What say you, @mwalters

mwalters: @jeremy6d Twitter is not the place for this conversation. :P

jasonkenney: @jeremy6d You could always have have the conversation in the comment section of a blog post

jeremy6d: @jasonkenney that requires the centralization of the conversation; we need a neutral, more spontaneous conversational space

jeremy6d: The post/comment model is too brittle. It reflects the way CERTAIN conversations start. Twitter is clueing us into another mode.

egoodnoe: @jeremy6d I agree but Twitter suffers from lack of threading

jasonkenney: @jeremy6d If you can get this to work (I’m having trouble) it could do it – http://tinyurl.com/5d7rjy

mwalters: @jeremy6d I’d still argue blog posts and use of trackback if a conversation needs to be public

jasonkenney: @jeremy6d Another way is interconnected posts on multiple blogs. Spread the conversation!

mwalters: @jeremy6d I’d also argue that not just many, but most of these conversations don’t need to be public other then for the authors ego

bigfleet: @mwalters So in your world, if you don’t understand or can’t trackback, you are a non-person?

mwalters: @bigfleet I don’t mean this as offensive as it sounds, but that’s a pretty absurd argument. Perhaps write a blog post to better explain?

bigfleet: @mwalters You posited that a trackback is a sufficient mechanism to expand the audience of a blog post. Those unable to do so are neutered.

mwalters: @bigfleet Easy to get a blog these days, and popular ones support trackback automatically. Plus you’re not limited 140 characters

jeremy6d: @egoodnoe that’s my point; we need a tool that captures the spontaneity without the poster/commenter duality.

mwalters: @jeremy6d @bigfleet @jasonkenney I’m out at this point … seriously, write a blog post or something, this is obviously too big for twitter

jeremy6d: @mwalters so why aren’t people following your simple plan? Answer: you’re glossing over an authentic need.

jeremy6d: @mwalters it’s not obvious at ALL that this is too big for twitter. But ball’s in your court on how you drive this conversation.

jeremy6d: @mwalters it IS easy to get a blog these days. But the power of twitter is that there’s no artificial distinction btw a post and a comment.

jeremy6d: I’ll say one thing in favor of @mwalters ‘s argument: if you need to post three tweets to get your point across, just blog it. -1 for me.

The points I would like to address are:

“People who knock conversations on twitter forget that there’s not a good alternative for public micro-conversations. What say you, @mwalters”

As I said in tweets, I believe that blogging is an acceptable platform for having public conversations (micro or not).  There is nothing that says a blog post needs to be multiple pages.  It can be, “I’m bored” or something more in depth.  Admittedly, the former is a bit absurd to make into a blog post, but I’d argue that it would be equally absurd on Twitter.  I have yet to see a reasonable argument as to why blogging doesn’t work for micro-blogging/conversations.

“jeremy6d: @jasonkenney that requires the centralization of the conversation; we need a neutral, more spontaneous conversational space”

Twitter is NOT centralizing it?  Especially when compared to having it via blog posts w/ trackback?  I’d say it’s not only centralizing it, but is doing so poorly.

“@mwalters You posited that a trackback is a sufficient mechanism to expand the audience of a blog post. Those unable to do so are neutered.”

Blogging is very easy to get into these days, and most popular blogging platforms do trackback without the author even having to think about it.  As long as they link to the post which they are replying to, the blogging platform will automatically send a trackback.  For instance, WordPress has this functionality and is easily viewed as one of the most popular blogging platforms that currently exists.

For a little further clarification, I’d say that because of this, arguing trackback as some sort of entrance barrier just doesn’t float for me.

As well, I was specifically singling out trackbacks because I know that Jeremy has concern over owning his content, comments/posts/etc.  Trackback is an existing tool that fully allows this.

“@egoodnoe that’s my point; we need a tool that captures the spontaneity without the poster/commenter duality.”

It doesn’t need to be poster/commenter.  Once you use a trackback to reply to someones post, you have essentially removed the “commenter” connotations, while still allowing someone that is trying to follow the thread to do so.

“@mwalters it’s not obvious at ALL that this is too big for twitter. But ball’s in your court on how you drive this conversation.”

Of course it was.  You basically admit to this later, so I’ll just let this one sit unless you’d like to bring it back up.

“@mwalters it IS easy to get a blog these days. But the power of twitter is that there’s no artificial distinction btw a post and a comment.”

There’s no artificial distinction between a post and a comment with trackbacks either, and trackback makes following a thread FAR easier then the @ reply system in place on twitter.  It’s virtually impossible to follow a conversation thread on twitter unless you’re extremely bored and feel like extensively using search.twitter.com or you happen to find the tale end of the conversation, allowing you to follow the thread backwards via “in reply to” links.  This doesn’t even begin to touch on how horrible that is (trying to follow a conversation in reverse, c’mon).

Anyhow, that is why it is my opinion that Twitter is not a good tool for carrying on a conversation, especially when compared to blog posts.  Although remember that you are not limited to blog posts.  We are oozing methods of communication these days: eMail, IM, SMS, just to name a few.  Perhaps I’m a Twitter “purist”, but I really look at Twitter as more of a beacon system.  It asks the question, “What are you doing?” and I feel that is best used when answering that question.