Twitblogs: Hype, function, and opinion

What is twitblogs?

I succumbed. I was too tempted by all the talk about twitblogs to resist trying it any longer.  For those who don’t know what twitblogs is, they describe themselves as “a service that lets you say more, share more, and do more with your friends, family and followers. Twitblogs is a newer and richer way of connecting with your twitter social network…”. What basically happens is that you log into twitblogs using your Twitter username and password and you have a choice of adding a blog or a tweet as shown below.

Blogging on twitblogs?

If you decide you want to write a blog or include some rich media, basically if you want to go over the 140 character limit of twitter, you go to the “blog post” tab and write there like you would on a normal blog and click publish to reveal your thoughts to the twitterverse.  Basically at this point twitblogs posts a tweet with your blog title and a link to the post, just as though you are sharing a normal link. My twitblog post came up on my twitter as the image below

Why is everyone talking about twitblogs?

In my part of the world the attention around Twitblogs has had less to do with its functionality and more to do with the well-known-for-wrong-reasons Sam Sethi being employed on the team.  Issues around privacy and password security seem to now be getting addressed, however originally there was no privacy disclosure or promises around keeping your Twitter identity safe when you entered your Twitter login details to access the site.  Now while I understand that the site is in alpha and twitblogs most certainly has a right of reply, I felt part of the comment left on the 140char blog from a Roger from Twitblogs was making excuses, publicity and what other applications do should not be governing what Twitblogs does with their TOS, that’s really prompting me to ask “if I jumped off the cliff would you do it too?”.

What about the functionality? What can Twitblogs add to the Twitter experience?

I can’t lie, despite all the negative words in my part of the world it seems to be a nice clean looking app which can potentially add value to Twitter.  For those who don’t have a blog, don’t want the Twitterverse to see their blog, or perhaps don’t want to write all their expanded thoughts on their blog I guess Twitblogs can add some value.  It does fill that hole between “what if I want to write more than 140 characters” and “I don’t want to write an entire blog post” quite well.  To me personally, I quite like to keep a record of my more extended thoughts on my blog, and if I felt the need I’d extend my blog via link to Twitter if appropriate.  I like the challenge of getting my message into 140 characters as it stops me waffling, that’s really part of the attraction to Twitter for me.

Will I be using twitblogs?

So for me? I’ll be sticking with WordPress over Twitblogs, but not because of the hype (although that Sam Sethi stuff really does concern me on an ethical level and would influence my decision if I found Twitblogs useful), or because I don’t like the app (I think it seems pretty cool and could fill a gap for lots of people), it’s just because it doesn’t fit with my Twitter style of “short and sweet” with links to other interesting places. But that’s just me. I think whether you choose to support something for ethical reasons is a personal choice which should be informed by all the information you can reasonably get your hands on, but I’m not going to make that choice for anyone else.