There has been much talk of Twitter heralding the end of blogging, which is a little like saying Lego killed the construction industry. Twitter is blogging, it is just blogging without the thought process, the craftsmanship or the paragraphs. Which is what makes it so great.

But one way in which Twitter is killing blogs is this new form of lazy writing, whereby a blogger just collects the oh-so-witty things they have said on Twitter that week and calls that a blog post. I won’t hyperlink to any of you, but you know who you are.

So, hypocritical bandwagoneer that I am, I thought I would allow myself this indulgence as I hit my 1000th Tweet milestone. A good time for a review my last year and a half of micro-narcissism (March 2008 is when I first succumbed, which was late, but still six months before Stephen Fry). Surely out of 1000 carefully constructed pithy missives there were at least a few 140-character gems.

I can’t believe my first three-word tweet had a spelling mistake …

surcoming to Twitter.
Fri Mar 14 15:33:24 +0000 2008

I’m finding I’ll buy anything the new French President is trying to
sell us as long as he has his wife standing next to him. Tue Apr 01 10:24:00 +0000 2008

Munching marmite on toast. The zinc helps quell my homicidial urges
Wed May 14 11:12:26 +0000 2008

conjecture: Public Enemy had an entirely white fanbase, all of whom believed the band had an entirely black fanbase.
Mon Jun 09 14:49:43 +0000 2008

conjecture: Today’s senior web programmers all started on ZX Spectrums, while the web designers all had Commodore 64s.
Mon Jun 16 10:10:23 +0000 2008

Sending out some love to @curious_debs, who is carrying my second
child, while looking after my first, and doing a splendid job of it. Wed Aug 20 11:43:46 +0000 2008

The Geri Halliwell diet and workout – you too could have a body like
mine. For those who aspire to looking like a weird muscular child. Thu Sep 04 11:00:54 +0000 2008

Overheard in the local – old codger trying to explain who Thomas the
Tank Engine was: “It’s like Starlight Express, but for kids”
Sat Sep 06 19:35:00 +0000 2008

Unaltered be to appears reality, live gone has collider CERN the.
Wed Sep 10 10:01:46 +0000 2008

Loving how every report of the Channel Tunnel fire I have heard feels the need to point out it was at the “French end”.
Fri Sep 12 14:29:05 +0000 2008

Caught a whiff of CKOne on the tube today and was briefly transported back to the late nineties.
Wed Oct 08 11:22:51 +0000 2008

@CulturalSnow Godel in a nutshell: We cannot prove 2+2 always =4. Any system above a basic level of sophistication will always be flawed.
Thu Oct 09 08:56:05 +0000 2008

I need some new swear-words.
Tue Oct 14 14:34:44 +0000 2008

@antikewl You don’t know how close our firstborn came to being named “Thor”. Seriously.
Thu Oct 23 09:54:42 +0000 2008

Still not exactly clear on what a “hockey mom” is. Great name for a band though.
Thu Nov 06 15:14:23 +0000 2008

Can’t believe there are gentlemen out cottaging on Dukes’ Mound in this weather. Have to admire their dedication. Don’t they have jobs?
Wed Dec 10 14:38:43 +0000 2008

Realising, for the first time, that Friendly Fires and Fleet Foxes are two separate bands.
Fri Jan 02 22:43:54 +0000 2009

Just bought 3 Stewart Little DVDS, rather than have to explain how
things seen on telly over xmas cannot always be viewed again on demand.
Thu Jan 08 14:21:53 +0000 2009

@shardcore Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith, Mel Croucher, Lloyd Mangram. Actually, I have no idea what any of these look like, then or now.
Tue Jan 13 20:34:23 +0000 2009

Staring at long list of [NOT MY CLIENT]s films while I wait for an
upload and thinking [NOT MY CLIENT] haven’t half done some shit.
Fri Jan 16 16:01:42 +0000 2009

Yay, the final day of the Bush regime. We should all invade our nearest oil-producing country in honour.
Tue Jan 20 09:29:35 +0000 2009

Just had my guitar playing described as “disgusting”.
Sun Feb 01 13:46:35 +0000 2009

If I had simpler tastes I wouldn’t waste so much time keeping up with
obscure bands/films etc. Then I might get round to fixing that blind
Wed Feb 04 10:00:10 +0000 2009

Reiterating @edsilv, one thing Twitter teaches you is that the lives of
your mates are so much more interesting than your fave celebs.
Mon Feb 09 09:04:13 +0000 2009

Croydon Ikea Car Park in heavy sleet – can you imagine anything more beautiful?
Thu Feb 12 23:16:37 +0000 2009

@edsilv According to the Sex and the City film, women don’t care about brains anymore, they just need huge walk-in wardrobes.
Sat Feb 14 09:25:49 +0000 2009

Can’t find anything on the CBeebies website explaining what happened to that girl’s arm.
Mon Feb 16 18:01:31 +0000 2009

@leifkendall Her family must be [sniff] so… proud… This is the house mummy’s cancer built.
Tue Feb 17 10:35:43 +0000 2009

We’re now five days overdue and both nervous wrecks. Getting rather eager to meet my second son now.
Wed Feb 18 08:43:11 +0000 2009

Full of love.
Mon Feb 23 00:31:11 +0000 2009

Ok, that’s enough. That last one was Tweet No.530 – the birth of my second son.

The full history of my first year and a half of mindless chatter can be viewed here. If you want to play with the Twitter API, start here. If you want to hear my next 1000 micro-brainfarts, you can follow me here. And if you are wondering if this is the most self-indulgent blog post I have ever written, the answer is probably “yes”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under bullets, introspection, tech, web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.