Not that long ago, New York magazine did a story that posed the question of whether twitter personalities are edging out moderately successful bloggers. How can this be true? How is it that twittering is already making blogging obsolete? I’m still getting used to the fact that my time working at a magazine (as we currently know it) has an eventual expiration date, but I cannot handle the notion that my new blog could be better served as a twitter because of all the stupid people who are obsessed with Twitter updates. How are blogs being so quickly overrun? Isn’t Twitter, like, three months old? When will Twitter be overrun? Tomorrow? Maybe by a service that lets you just publish an emoticon that represents how you feel. Until another site let’s you choose half an emoticon because one is too tiring to select. And then a third site will just have one-stroke punctuation posts. I should prepare for the future and patent that last idea. The punctuation lexicon: ! = excited, ? = confused, ; = “there’s shit in my eye”, ~ = “I’m feeling saucy”.
Where does this end?
In all seriousness though, Twittering won’t completely replace blogs. Of course it won’t. Without Perez Hilton’s celebrity penis drawings, a story about Miley Cyrus or Britney Spears just won’t make sense to the average reader. People need a visual reminder of things like that. “Oh right, she’s a ho. Now I can put this story about jean shorts into context.”
