Blogging in the Twitter Age

June 21st, 2008 was a momentous day: Not Quite Scilly came into being. But NQS was not my first experience of engaging with an online audience. A few years earlier I had joined BirdForum and gradually become increasingly talkative. Having lots to say on a shared platform is all very well, but the desire for one's own show is strong. And so the blog was born.

Clearly I was bubbling over with ideas back then, publishing two posts on that first day. One included a brief introduction to the author, the other looked like this...

...and so it continued in similar vein

In 2008 Twitter was an infant, barely two years old. In 2023 it is all grown up, a complex creature of contrasts. On the one hand a fount of information and home to selfless experts, on the other a festering cauldron of bile and hatred. Between your latest request for ID help with that tricky moth, posting a bit of bird news or shamelessly promoting a blog post, it is all too easy to wander off into dark and depressing places.

On the plus side, some Twitterati posted fascinating threads (thread = series of sequential tweets) that would have made excellent blog material. And some were just outright entertaining, regularly posting great content. But Twitter output is ephemeral, posted and gone. Try finding it again six months later. Ah, if only such folk would publish a blog...

I remember Stewart Sexton (Stewchat) likening blogs to magazines, that you can pick up and read any time, at your leisure. Twitter is not like that. It demands attention now, not later, and there is a lot of interaction. It is far less relaxed a medium than bloggage.

I must admit though, leaving Twitter feels like leaving a community, as if I have stepped out of a vast hall of chattering people and shut the door behind me. And now I can no longer hear any of them. A shame that, because some I miss. Not all though. No, definitely not all.

And what of blogging?

Writing a blog post takes time. Preparing and selecting photos or other images takes time. Deciding how to arrange your material takes time. I am fussy about words and grammar, so editing and checking for errors takes time. Everything about blogging is slow. But I like it that way. To re-read an old post and still feel pleased with it is a satisfying thing. And if a few others enjoy it too? Well, win-win.

Between 2008 and today, in my experience blogging hasn't changed much. A blog post is what it is, what it has always been, and at the end there may or may not be one or two reader comments and author replies. NQS is hosted by Blogger, beneath the Google umbrella. Thus far they haven't charged a penny for indulging me the privilege of publishing this blog, nor forced adverts upon me or my readers. Of course I do not take that for granted. You only have to look at Twitter to see how unwise that would be. I feel sorry for anyone whose livelihood depends on a Twitter presence, and the fickle whims of that medium's owner. But while Blogger exists - and while I exist - so will NQS. Well, that's the plan.