Twitter and Facebook Could Be Good News for Blogs

I've railed about Facebook and especially Twitter as media that are too often used for dashed-off, narcissistic little messages of little consequence.  Granted Twitter can be a powerful tool for political organization, hence the blocking of the site by repressive regimes, and Facebook is great for finding long-lost friends and joining interest groups, but most tweets and Facebook wall posts baffle me.  Once again I ask, why should your every thought and activity be of interest to anybody?

When I started blogging, before Twitter existed or Facebook really took off, lots of people were using blogs for the same sloppy, narcissistic minutia.  But there's hope for the blogosphere.  In an interview in the July issue of Wired, Scott Rosenberg of Salon.com, who has recently published a book about the history and practice of blogging, says, "There have always been two types of blog posts: brief incidental blurts--really short one-line things, quick links--and more substantial statements.  Twitter has taken that brief, blurting blogging and put it to rest.  That pushes blogs toward a tradition of real writing."

Excellent.  Now that dashed-off narcissism has been relegated to Twitter, we can only hope that a greater number of personal bloggers can be counted on to rise to the challenge of "real writing" and provide readers with the kind of finely honed narcissism that I practice here.