You probably have heard about Twitter or Tumblr (and there’s probably a dozen other micro-blogging sites out there). I’m wondering, how useful are these? Why would someone spend time writing on twitter instead of writing on his/her own blog? In the end, don’t we want this traffic to visit our own blog instead of visiting our twitter or tumblr page?

What i’m getting at here is, we want to increase our page rank, build an audience, get more traffic, and have control over our blog (or for some it’s the opposite, hehe). I’m not talking about blogs that are hosted on blogspot or a similar service, i think that’s real fine, though i prefer having my own domain name and hosting. But seriously i don’t get it, what is it that twitter has that makes it so popular? (you can write posts of max 140char! Come on! 140 characters! This very post is already over 140char!)

We already have community sites like mybloglog and blogcatalog, where we can send “instant” messages, so why spend time writing on twitter? (to let the world know what we’re doing right this moment?) Can it help build an audience and have people interested in our blog(s)? Shouldn’t we focus on writing interesting posts, that would attract “natural” traffic and links? Is micro-blogging services like twitter and tumblr, just another waste of time? (like we need that!)

John, over at Finding The Money, has an interesting post about annoyment in the blogosphere, that i think is worth the read and is relevant.

I’m kind of a relationship geek (yep, i got that from Liz Strauss! hehe) and even being someone who loves to interact and engage in conversations and discuss with people, i see no point in micro-blogging sites… maybe because the posts you write stays on the main page for less than 15 seconds. Sean Dinner had an interesting (and fun) post about twitter some time ago.

What’s your take on all this? Do you use services like twitter or tumblr? If so, why? If not, why? What’s in for the writers? Please help me out here, i have many unanswered questions! And others could benefit from reading your replies ;)