WordPress VS Twitter? There’s No Contest!
Nov 29th, 2009 | By James Lewin | Category: Commentary, Microblogging 
There’s been a lot of discussion, growing out of the tremendous popularity of Twitter, that blogging is going to be replaced by microblogging, or some other “next best thing”.
Last year, for example, Wired magazine’s Paul Boutin weighed in on the subject, arguing that Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.
WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg weighted in on this today, stating something that should be obvious – that “new forms of social media, including micro-blogging, are complementary to blogging”:
One of the many uses of Twitter is to link to and promote your blog posts. (And other people’s blog posts.) As we grow, so do they, and vice versa. I blog when I have something longer to say, like this. I tweet when it’s the lowest friction way to talk to my friends, or get distribution for something longer I did somewhere else.
It’s not really a “versus,†it’s an “and.â€
Whether the Twitter team intended it or not, they’ve built a killer and highly addictive reader platform with dozens of interesting UIs on top of it.
The entire Twitter vs WordPress meme is a flawed view of new media technologies.
A more significant thing to consider is this: What are the best tools to use to publish new media?
Here’s what it looks like at the end of 2009:
- Microblogging – use Twitter. Twitter is often frustrating because it’s such an immature platform. It’s ten years behind blogging. That means that you can do a lot of useful things with it, but you’re going to have to deal with klunky tools, relentless spammers and, yes, your “mafia friends”.
- Web Publishing – use WordPress. People still don’t know what”blogging” is, but it doesn’t matter. “Blogging” tools are now web publishing tools, and WordPress is the de facto standard.
- Podcasting – use WordPress plus any audio editor. There’s no standard for podcast audio editing, because so many good audio apps are available. WordPress, though, has become the go-to app for publishing podcast episodes.
- Internet Video – use YouTube, plus any video app. Video apps are still way too complicated and none has become really dominant for user generated Internet video. If your video isn’t on YouTube, though, it isn’t really published to the Internet.
Are there times when you’ll want to use Twitter over WordPress? Of course.
More and more, though, new media publishers need to look at what combination of tools to use.
James great post sir on your add on as to what Matt had to say. Twitter replace wordpress never.. here's another reason why; wordpress dominates because of its openess to make it your own. The the blogging community loves that. There are so many theme styles, for wordpress not to mention the widgets and plug-ins.
Twitter on the other hand, yes cool and yes you can change your twitter background but wheres the Akismet thingy (just kidding). There are many apps and services for twitter as well with use of it's API, but for the majority of them if not all, you have to use outside of twitter in other words there's no install button on twitter to add those apps to twitter for your page. Like you said its learning how to use a combination of different tools.
Twitter vs WordPress ? no contest but if you ask MySpace vs FaceBook I think we know the outcome there.
Ralph
I agree with Matt on this one. Twitter is more like a distributed IM than a blog tool. And the user base is pretty narrow compared to WordPress as well as being more US centric.
Twitter feels more like an extension of SMS than a publishing tool. But it can be a powerful viral tool if you know how to use it! Good post James!
It's not the same thing!
It's not the same thing!
WordPress VS Twitter? There’s No Contest!
I read the question about Word Press vs. Twitter and how they were similar programs when you got down to what they were really about. Things like twitter and face book and my space have been growing throughout the years and really being a popular world wide web. On twitter you are pretty much blogging or stating your opinions so your friends or different people can see what you’re writing about on the web. While word press is stated that it uses a different form of that called micro blogging. So it is said to be the same type of program is just a newer use than what is on the web today. Blogging is a form of just getting all your stuff out there that you want to say so the author is really representing that in saying that it doesn’t matter how you get it out there as long as you say what you want. If it’s in the same format and comes out in the same way then I should be in competition if it does the same exact thing. It’s just new forms of media out there and new technology that is just revamping itself. People are allowed to talk to each other through blogs and it betters the social network cites if more programs allow you to do such that.
To be able to communicate on the web and being able to really understand what each other is saying. Blogging is becoming such a big thing even though it might be called other things on the web it’s what young people want to talk about so it gives them a place to post all their interest. It’s all through technology and how it is being brought to us by each day and how we take that information and actually use it on the web. In this article he talks about how twitter and micro blogging are going to be in 2009. He says that twitter is a new program and it hasn’t really been out on the market for people to use as long as blogging has and its doesn’t have all the programs worked out yet. You can still use twitter in a lot of different ways but you’re not going to have all the programs necessary, that blogging on outside sources have. People don’t know what blogging really is because they use it in so many other formats that you don’t know you’re even doing it. Blogging is just communicating on the web to different people and talking about different topics that are important to you.
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I use twitter and don’t know exacly what I should think about it.
Wordpress is cool and I love it. I googled the ‘wordpress versus twitter’ because I wish I could ‘twitter’ at wordpress instead at ‘twitter’. Why? Because it seems much more peaceful and balancing than the 140 counter at twitter.
Wordpress is long time speach. At twitter, who cares? So it seems a way to say what you could or would not say at wordpress because of prestige or so. A twitter like wordpress account may or may not do the job, since it is wordpress and I care about what I do at wordpress.
Well I guess that is it for today.