Spreading the Word

I’m not the first per­son to notice the duplic­a­tion of posts, as people post what’s hap­pen­ing to Twit­ter and Face­book and Plurk, and blog about it if they feel like writ­ing some­thing a little longer. Which means that when you really want to keep up with what someone is up to, you sub­scribe to them on all those chan­nels, and Friend­Feed as well, and put up with the duplic­a­tion (spiced up by the time lag between things appear­ing on one chan­nel and when they appear on the oth­er; ain’t latency fun?). 

The prob­lem comes when you want to respond, or join in the con­ver­sa­tion. Do you reply to the tweet? Or com­ment on the blog post­ing? Or respond to the per­son indi­vidu­ally by email or chat? Or all of the above? 

In the con­crete case that made me think about this, I sent off a chat mes­sage, and now I’m going to also blog it: con­grat­u­la­tions to Edd and fam­ily on the new arrival; may he sleep peace­fully and grow vig­or­ously, and not fight too much with his older siblings.

And maybe that’s the answer: take each case as it comes, depend­ing on which audi­ence you think might (or should) be involved, and how eph­em­er­al the con­ver­sa­tion should be.