Blogging vs Tweeting: A New Year's Resolution

It's been a very long time since I sat down to write a considered blog post. But I'm back here on my blog at 4:15 pm on December 31st 2009 poised at the precipice of a new decade.

Why am I back? Keith Burtis. You may very well know him. During his tenure at Best Buy he made major strides in growing their online community. Now he's a consultant...helping many other companies. So fine you say. So what? Here's what. He recently left me a comment on Twitter that he enjoyed this blog. Don't we all love unexpected praise from an industry expert?

So, thanks to Keith (to reinforce a growing feeling), I'm back with a 2010 New Year's resolution to blog more and use Twitter less often. And that will not be an easy resolution to keep.

Why? Twitter (and all the various social media sites like it), primarily, are short form social media. You can share your views quickly & easily and get instant fulfillment. You know this. Tweets, at least in my mind, don't demand a beginning, middle and and end like a good blog post.

And Twitter, particularly for me, has become addictive. @scottlackey; @jugularnyc (our communications and social media agency), @nycstories (a multimedia site which includes bizarre true stories, my photos and music--all about New York City); and @nycsongs -- (a nyc music Twitter station). And that doesn't even include client social media pages.

Blogging is different. A well developed post for me takes 45-60 minutes and requires, again for me (maybe not you), a more analytical perspective. It requires commitment and time. But blogging does do one crucial thing. It forces you to evaluate a subject more thoroughly and express your feelings about it in a more organized, and hopefully more detailed, fashion.

And it's time to do that. My New Year's resolutions are to blog more. To write more analytical posts. To do less straight reporting. To be more original. To support assertions. To write about what's on my mind and what we're encountering every day at Jugular, and I'm encountering in my life. Our work with terrific indie musicians in Brooklyn and colleges and the websites we're building in the health field. And much more.

I don't want to leave Twitter entirely...just strike a better balance. I hope I keep my resolution.

And..thank you Keith. Happy New Year.

P.S. Here's an article from today's Huffington Post which I just Googled "How To Keep Your New Year's Resolution (Without Feeling Guilty)" At least I've got #2 down. "How To Keep New Year's Resolutions".

Why Did Google Recently Purchase Three Social Software Companies: Dodgeball, Jaiku & Zingku?

My previous post reviewed Google's recent acquisitions of three social software companies and briefly profiled each one. Read it below. Here, as promised, is a more detailed discussion of the rationale for purchasing these companies.

Dodgeball, Jaiku, and Zingku are all, in one way or another cellphone-IM communications. It's a market that's still quite open in the US.

To understand the potential market size you need to look at Europe. Texting in the UK (the market we're most familiar with) is the basis of all cell communications for 18-26 year olds in the university market. Part of this is that prepaid minutes are much more popular over there than in the US and that you can send 20 texts in the U.K. for the price of a minute's conversation.

Young Europeans text everything, complex plans, where to meet, news, even long conversations. On average probably 10-20 texts per day. And unlike here in the US, they're always on Instant Messenger.

So if text becomes less expensive in America and Google has all the cool text-related sites they're looking at a potentially huge market. In the emerging age of iphone (or if a Googlephone exists?), These will be great places to sell video or visual AdWord-like-objects that become SOCIALLY relevant in an immediate manner.

Plus...these sites will also get radical upgrades which will also make them even more desirable for the European market.

We've been using Dodgeball at Jugular, and I'll explain how it might all work in the next entry (thanks to Katie, our Jugular intern for her smart research and insight).