Going short (are you what you can communicate in 140c?)

Blogging is dead, the short form and short attention span RULE the web. Umm… Really?  So let’s think about that for a minute.

If you’ve only got 140c to express your dying words… what would they be?

There’s nothing magic about 140c, it’s not like haiku or anything. It’s just the number they hit upon when inventing Twitter. Now the idea is… If you spent the time you normally use doing statusphere updates (Twitter, TXT, Facebook) and did something else (blog posts, book chapters, poetry) would you have anything more valuable at the end of a week. Or how about at the end of 10 years?

The short form acid test: Have you collected your BEST TWEETS anywhere? Do you have an idea of your best tweets? If you had a best tweet what would it be? Are you adding value in your tweets, or just twittering away?

I come and go with Twitter. It’s more a matter of the mood I’m in rather than best "status" format to use. There are times when Twitter is alive with intelligent conversation. And mostly people don’t "get" Twitter or tweeting, because they are trying to use Twitter.com to tweet. (See TweetDeck, Hootesuite or some other Twitter-Management tool to get your stream under control.)

So here it is, my BEST EVER tweet. And I’m typing this in from memory, though you can find it captured on this site under Ah ha.

NOW, I am here.

That’s it. It’s sort of a zen koan. Now being the present moment, IN THIS MOMENT. And "I am here" both being an affirmation of being in the moment, and a compact summary of my philosophy that you need to be LIVE on Twitter and not use timered or automatic tweeting tools. AND the biggest connect is a swipe at my least favorite stream generators, geo-location beasts Foursquare and Gowalla, that often flood peoples twitter streams with an endless line of "I am at…" tweets that make no sense unless you are stalking the person. (Please, if you use one of these tools, TURN OFF your "I AM AT" updates to Twitter. If I want to follow you on Gowalla or Foursquare, I will follow/track you on those websites.)

So is there beauty in your tweets? Is there harmony and language manipulations? Do you make yourself laugh sometimes by what you tweet?

I hope that you can begin to gather some of your best tweets and put them on a page somewhere. Even just to amuse yourself. (Often that’s what Twitter does best of all.) And if you don’t have any good tweets, ir all your chirps are about going for a Diet Coke or what you had for lunch, well… most of us simply don’t care. Your chatter goes right into the same bucket with the folks telling me they can get me 10,000 followers in one week. (Yeah, let’s talk about that one later.)

Be real, be realtime, and tweet something of value. That’s the extended version of my best tweet.

@jmacofearth

permalink: http://bit.ly/going_short

Other posts of Twitterific qualities:

• In 140 characters is there room for poetry and narrative?
• Are You Bored With Twitter Yet? What Excites You These Days?
• What Have You Tweeted for Me Lately: Burnout In Twitterville
• Rockin the Tweets: Twitter Tools, Twitter Lists, Stats, Discovery #Twitter
• Sacrificing Twitter for the Greater Good: Signal-to-Noise Improves

Tags: best of twitter, best-of tweets, gathering peeps, gathering tweets, tweeting your heart out, twitter hints, twitter way, twitterlaws, your best tweets