BFTP: Improving the quality of tweets
Sunday, November 22, 2015 at 05:43AM Blogorrhea noun. An unusually high volume output of articles on a blog.
So Ole joins a monastery where he is required to take a vow of silence. Each year monks are allowed to speak only two words.
At the end of Ole's first year, Abbot Lars asks him for his two words. "Bad food," says Ole.
At the end of his second year, Ole replies "Hard bed" when the Abbot Lars asks.
At the end of the third year Ole's two words are "I quit."
"I am hardly surprised," remarks the Abbot Lars, "all you've done since you've been here is complain, complain, complain.
Ba dump.
Here's my proposal - there should be a five "tweet per 24 hours" limit to any one Twitter account. Period. No exceptions.
My guess is that the quality of tweets would rise fantastically. Right now for many twitterers, blogorrhea has a companion condition - Twitterrhea. Really does any really read 10-20 things that are THAT worth sharing? Have thought others would REALLY find valuable?
Wouldn't all of us be more discriminating if there were a limit?
For most people I talk to (and for myself), the big information issue is not a lack but a glut that makes it difficult to discriminate the useful and provacative from the mediocre and useless. Twitter is not helping with this in the least. There is too much "I read it and now I will pass it on and get a Twitter point" mentality.
Not that long ago, print journal editors provided a valuable service - they, fairly or unfairly, helped distribute only the "best" ideas in the profession. Yes, I am sure they practiced with a bias and that some really good stuff got lost in the process, but I didn't have to spend half my evenings scanning posts, articles and applications to determine if they had value to me. The editor did that for me pretty accurately.
What would happen if every tweet cost a quarter; every blog post cost five dollars; every e-mail a dime to the writer. Wouldn't we all be a bit more discriminating in what we sent?
I would be. You may well have been spared reading this post...
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Reader Comments (3)
Thanks for provoking our thinking around our consumption and dissemination of information. I content that most of what people tweet isn't even read. If it pushed out by a "rockstar" voice they retweet it mindlessly. What if we were all better consumers and spent our time and energy in conversations rather than mindless sharing and retweeting?
Think it's more about the quality of the tweet than the amount. Yes, what is valuable is debatable, but for example, a tweet that reads "@_______ is sharing great stuff in this session" without a link to what's being shared does little for the tweet's audience. Thinking "Tweeting with Your Audience" (as is the case for writing in general!) would make for a good follow up post...Doug?
Randym
Well said!
Doug
Hi Deb,
I find many Tweets to be over very little value in and of themselves. Links to resources are fine if vetted. I've always thought even Twitter "discussions" were like trying to converse about a serious topic using only bumper stickers.
Ah well,
Doug