Reasons why in many cases twitter threads are a better medium (heh) than blog posts: THREAD
But first, a caveat: you can find poorly written twitter threads just as you can find poorly written blog articles. Assume equally reasonable quality.
1. Friction in creating. There’s a reason why many more twitter threads are written than blog posts by people who use both. Twitter is more casual and so the mental friction in writing a tweetstorm is much less than writing a blog post.
2. Self-contained thoughts. Each tweet can be atomic, encapsulating one concept, and easily quotable and retweetable as such. You can do that with blog posts, but it’s not as easy and natural. See also: this thread. _Twitter hangs in infinite loop_
3. Virality. Any tweet in a thread can catch the attention of the audience. With a built-in way to immediately spread that tweet (retweets, quote tweets) there is a greater likelihood of getting in front of people.
4. Friction in consuming. Seeing an interesting tweet, tapping into it, and scrolling down reading without leaving your current app is a pleasant experience.* Opening a link into a browser is less so.
* Above 30-40 tweets it becomes less pleasant due to load times.
* Above 30-40 tweets it becomes less pleasant due to load times.
5. Ease of interacting. When partway through a tweetstorm the reader wants to add more context or ask a question, it’s easy to reply and often catches the attention of the author, which leads to interesting side conversations.
6. More concise writing. Due to the constrained nature of tweets, the author is more likely to be brief and to the point. I’ve deleted dozens of extra words already in this tweetstorm that I otherwise would have left in due to space constraints.
7. Future updates. I do this often: come back to a formerly published twitter thread, even months later, and add updates or more information. This bumps the thread back into attention and is helpful for bringing context along quickly.
So what types of writing are still better suited to blog articles?
* When searchability is important
* When it would take far too many tweets to make the point
* When it’s important to have editorial review
* When searchability is important
* When it would take far too many tweets to make the point
* When it’s important to have editorial review
What did I miss? Any counterarguments or supporting statements? I’m open to discussion.
