June 29th, 2009
To blog or to Tweet? That is the question . . . here is an answer
I’ve noticed that many people have abandoned their blogs in favor of real-time blogging on Twitter or on Friendfeed. Their argument is that they can’t do both. And it’s understandable because it all takes time, lots of it.
But it might be worth revisiting that strategy and doing more blogging. Here’s a cautionary tale . . .
Robert Scoble, who grew to fame as one of the first tech bloggers while at Microsoft, publishes Scobleizer. But he has been very enthusiastic about Twitter and Friendfeed, so much so that he started to neglect Scobleizer. [Please see: Is Twitter (and Friendfeed) Killing Blogging? Scobleizer Hasn't Posted In 12 Days!!!]
Mr Scoble became a tireless advocate for the real-time web and has scolded others for not taking part in Twitter and Friendfeed.
However, he just had a change of heart and says he is staying away from Twitter and Friendfeed and is back to his blog because those services are “hurting long-time knowledge.”
What hey are hurting is his traffic. Compete.com shows that in just a two month period, April to May, 2009, the number of unique visitors to Scobleizer plunged by nearly 50%!!!
That can’t be good news for his employer, Rackspace, which runs Scobleizer. There’s not much room on Twitter and Friendfeed to run Rackspace ads.
Also, Google doesn’t pay as much attention to Twitter and Friendfeed as it does to online sites. If you don’t exist on Google, you just don’t exist. It’s not surprising that Mr Scoble made this surprising u-turn.
Tom Foremski reports on the business and culture of Silicon Valley at the intersection of technology and media. He also writes at Silicon Valley Watcher. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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