Lifestreaming and Twitter is making us lazy

Actually, I should not say Twitter as they’ve been giving themselves enough shit lately with their scalability issues. I should say “micro-blogging”, but you know what I mean.

ReadWriteWeb wrote an article on the future of blogging revealed. Truth be told, they might be right, but God forbid they are. Lifestreaming is awesome and so is micro-blogging. The problem is this:

It is making us lazy. Eric, by no means am I saying you’re lazy. All evidence to the contrary, but you’re lazy to blog as much as you’ve done in the past, as am I and a lot of others. Its just easier to say things in a 140 characters. Its easier to monitor and list what I read, rather than to write about it. Our attention span is all fucked up.

A while back, daily del.icio.us link posts was all the rage and everyone was doing it. It almost seemed like an easy way out to not have to sit down and write something, carefully thinking about it beforehand. Some still persists to do it. After a while it became irritating to readers. My prediction is that by mixing your online activity with your main writings/blog would dilute your content and you’d end up pissing people off, rather than entertaining/educating them. It might seem weird and strange, but people want to read what others say, not what they read.

I do admit, there is a use for lifestreams. Yes, its not a bad thing having them somewhere on your site. It would be terrible to have it dilute your original content and IMHO should be kept separate. Then again, with our sacred little blogosphere turning into a Paris Hilton tabloid, it might be a good thing

8 Comments to "Lifestreaming and Twitter is making us lazy"

• StevenMcD said: On 08/07/2008 at 9:31 am

  I must agree with you on this, we’ll see what happens in the future

• wikidknickers said: On 08/07/2008 at 10:03 am

  I totally agree with you Stii - precis takes effort and time..i can see the uses of micro blogging esp where breaking news like earthquakes is concerned, but i reckon it can get overly random at times.

  That said, i think in some cases, comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges…i mean when i sit down and blog, it’s about a subject, a concept, an idea, whatever..and i think of the post as a ‘piece’ whereas micro blogging posts are situational observations and IMHO could never come close to the real thing…but maybe it’s just my poor brain responding to the lifestreaming information overload

• woganmay.com » The fall of blogging said: On 08/07/2008 at 10:05 am

  [...] came across this post - “Lifestreaming and Twitter is making us lazy” - by Stii. After RRW’s entry on “the future of blogging“, I think [...]

• Dimitrio said: On 08/07/2008 at 5:54 pm

  Me, not being a niche blogger, but mainly blogging about my life and new projects and nifty things, I think I will embrace life streaming. But I still see a need for blogs, for example, I don’t want to know what Vincent Maher is doing, but I want to hear what he thinks on certain topics!

• Microblogging, laziness and peace « Conrad Strydom’s blog said: On 08/08/2008 at 8:45 am

  [...] Stii then wrote on his that perhaps we (bloggers) are getting lazy and that perhaps Twitter is working for us cause we have short attention spans. [...]

• woganmay.com | Setting up a Lifestream said: On 09/17/2008 at 4:09 pm

  [...] lifestream? This question was raised a while ago, and the silent consensus reached was that most people just don’t have time for [...]

• User links about "lifestreaming" on iLinkShare said: On 10/02/2008 at 1:33 pm

  [...] by amit92000 0 days ago2 votesLifestreaming from your iPhone>> saved by Riyo1214 1 days ago3 votesLifestreaming and Twitter is making us lazy>> saved by Uchiha301 1 days ago3 votesAOL Acquires Lifestreaming Service Socialthing>> saved by [...]

• fromtheold said: On 11/27/2008 at 9:29 pm

  I totally agree,

  My opinion is that blogging will last long after the fat whale of twitter has sunk. People will eventually move on to the next big thing and forget about microblogging, and bloggers will be there to blog about it

  As I said, just my opinion.

Spit it out!

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