Microblogging Is a Mistake (By About Five Orders of Magnitude)
Microblogging, as exemplified by an individual Twitter entry, is 140 characters.
"Micro-" is the SI prefix for "millionth," so it logically follows that a regular blog entry would be a million times bigger, or 140,000,000 characters. (If nothing else, blogging is a completely logical behavior that is characterized by its rigorous adherence to strict scientific standards, is it not?)
At 5 characters per word, that's 28,000,000 words. Or about 280 novels.
Of course, no blogs begin to even approach this word count (some merely feel as if they do). So a renaming is in order.
If Microblogging Is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right
By one study, the bulk of blog entries are under 249 words.
Eyeballing my last few entries and using the quick-and-dirty Google Docs word count, my own entries are a little wordier than average (go figure) -- tending towards 500 words per entry, so call it 2,500 characters. Heck, I'm lazy -- call it 2,800 characters (it makes the math easier).
If a standard blog entry is 2,800 characters, 140 character-blogging (so-called "microblogging") is only 5% of that. Which would put the proper name for this kind of blogging in the realm of "deciblogging."
Meaning that the term microblogging is a misnomer by a factor of, oh, 100,000.
Now, since I just push words around, I know that I probably committed math abuse in there somewhere. And I'm okay with that. Since it would still be far less facepalm-worthy than this honey of a math error that I found in a Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers response to the question, "How many words in a basic adults book?" that I came across as I was writing this:
"Micro-" is the SI prefix for "millionth," so it logically follows that a regular blog entry would be a million times bigger, or 140,000,000 characters. (If nothing else, blogging is a completely logical behavior that is characterized by its rigorous adherence to strict scientific standards, is it not?)
At 5 characters per word, that's 28,000,000 words. Or about 280 novels.
Of course, no blogs begin to even approach this word count (some merely feel as if they do). So a renaming is in order.
If Microblogging Is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right
By one study, the bulk of blog entries are under 249 words.
Eyeballing my last few entries and using the quick-and-dirty Google Docs word count, my own entries are a little wordier than average (go figure) -- tending towards 500 words per entry, so call it 2,500 characters. Heck, I'm lazy -- call it 2,800 characters (it makes the math easier).
If a standard blog entry is 2,800 characters, 140 character-blogging (so-called "microblogging") is only 5% of that. Which would put the proper name for this kind of blogging in the realm of "deciblogging."
Meaning that the term microblogging is a misnomer by a factor of, oh, 100,000.
Now, since I just push words around, I know that I probably committed math abuse in there somewhere. And I'm okay with that. Since it would still be far less facepalm-worthy than this honey of a math error that I found in a Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers response to the question, "How many words in a basic adults book?" that I came across as I was writing this:
Vici says, "i wondered this the other day so i counted a page full of words and times it by the number of pagesYes, vici, I'm sure you do.
the answer came to twenty thousand
that means with every 5 books i read i read a million words i think that is amazing myself."
Tags:
Labels: blogging, dumb things, social media
posted by Joelogon at
7/01/2008
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5 Comments:
Ouch. I think I dated Vici.
By
Dan, At
7/02/2008 10:29 AM
I usually indugle myself on weekends by writing fewer but longer posts (400 words or more). I get the same satisfying number of page views as on weekdays. Go figure.
And if I have different readerships on weekdays and weekends, what's wrong with that?
By
Mike Licht, At
7/02/2008 11:54 AM
Dan: I should hope not, she sounds like a pre-teen.
Mike: Absolutely nothing. For most people, optimum entry length should be based on: 1. You. 2. Your subject. 3. Your audience. (In that order.)
By
Joelogon, At
7/03/2008 9:25 AM
See, and I usually think of microblogging in terms of Tumblr and Identica and tend to separate Twitter as a Status Service and Friendfeed as a lifestream aggregator.
Am I splitting hairs too much?
By
Dave Jeyes, At
7/15/2008 1:41 PM
Dave: Possibly. At this point, microblogging is an umbrella term that covers any kind of small, personal-but-publicly-shareable content.
You can make also make distinctions, though past a certain point, having too many genres and subgenres ceases to be useful (e.g. Electronic Music)
By
Joelogon, At
7/15/2008 3:42 PM
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