Paul Bradshaw has now posted some thoughts on his collaborative Twitter review of Here Comes Everybody. I was interested by his response to Dave Lee in which he says: "Dave was mistaking Twitter for a pure publishing platform. What I discovered was this: it was about a conversation, not a publication."
He obviously has a point, but the exchange highlights how hard it is now to distinguish between conversation and publication. Part of me felt uncomfortable reading and commenting on a dialogue between Twitterers but at the same time they had chosen to hold their conversation in a public place.
Maybe Paul gets closer to the real distinction when he observes: "A blog post is more ‘finished’ than a series of Twitter tweets. I didn’t have to worry as much about structure or what to leave in or out - if I felt I was reading an important point, I twittered it. If it sparked off a thought or example of my own, I twittered it...."
Leaving aside the frequently made (and often justified) criticism that too many blog posts are anything but 'finished', this gets closer to the point; if they are searchable and publicly accessible, Tweets are published, but the essential difference is lies in the degree of completeness.
I don't suppose any journalist ever believes they have 'completed' a story...
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