John Fleck notes something that I just happen to have been thinking about recently, which is that “different communities use different social media in different ways”:
We’ve got cool new tools, but divergence in terms of who uses which ones. Some folks interact via email lists, some via interlocking blog conversations, some via Facebook, some via twitter, some via some overlapping set of the above.
The context in which he mentions this is the use of Twitter among water-news enthusiasts, and his post is an attempt to put together some links to water news in a format that will reach people who aren’t part of that crowd.
The way I’ve noticed this phenomenon is related, and actually involves those same twittering water people. I’ve been getting a surprising (to me) number of visitors to Gambler’s House through Twitter, beginning with this post on water, which Fleck himself seems to have brought to the attention of the water-news community via his Twitter feed, and which subsequently made the rounds of various other people’s feeds and reached a wider audience.
Since then, it seems that the water-news and other related communities including science and environmental journalists have continued to tweet about particular posts of mine on a variety of topics, which brings those posts, and thus the blog, to a wider audience in all sorts of directions.
I’m not on Twitter myself, and I don’t really “get” it; I’m much more of an “interlocking blog conversations” guy. When it comes to Gambler’s House, though, I’m happy to get as broad and diverse an audience as possible, and I’ve been impressed with the way Twitter and the niche communities of interest who use it extensively have drummed up a lot of interest in what I have to say. This is especially useful since there doesn’t seem to be much of a southwestern archaeology blogosphere, so my blog-oriented approach toward online community hasn’t had much effect on increasing readership.
Anyway, I just wanted to note this interesting phenomenon, and thank John for all the readers he’s steered my way both directly and indirectly. I appreciate any help I can get in getting my ideas out there.
Sunlit Water 
For my internet usage, twitter is pretty much at its best for link sharing, since the decline of blogging as a quick everyday form of writing has made it seem weird to put up posts that are just links – especially just one link. But I think to get full use of it, you really need to be online most of the day, whether on a computer of some sort or on a phone. Otherwise it all goes by too quickly. I don’t even follow that many people.
Comment by andrew — September 7, 2009 @ 4:31 pm |
Yeah, it really seems like people who use it a lot are basically monitoring it all the time. Reading such people’s feeds, you get an odd mix of link-sharing, back-and-forth text-message-style conversations, and stuff like “who wants to go to lunch?”
This may be why it doesn’t really appeal to me, come to think of it. One thing I really like about blogging (and e-mail) is its asynchronous nature.
Comment by teofilo — September 7, 2009 @ 5:31 pm |