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22 Oct 2008 12:30 pm

IMing And Blogging

A reader writes:

I saw your conversation with Marc Ambinder today, and you mentioned that blogging occupies a space between writing and speaking.  The best example of this is probably not blogs, but instant message conversations, which I started having around 1995 when I first got AOL. At this point (I'm 26) I'm sure that I've communicated much more by writing than by phone (this is perhaps the first time in four generations or more that this is the case).

This reliance on instant written communication characterizes most people my age, and definitely those younger than I am.

IM conversations, unlike text messaging, have room for one to write out a complete, coherent, and mostly grammatically correct conversation, and this is one reason why young people are so attracted to blogs like yours that mirror the kinds of conversations we've been having for years on IM -- conversations where you can write your initial thoughts, erase, get instant feedback, write again -- but you have to produce and send a message quickly enough that the conversation doesn't die.

In a way, the IM conversation looks like the dialogue of a play; but unlike a play, the participants are writing the dialogue while simultaneously performing the part.  I wonder if you feel the same way while you blog -- that you're simultaneously writing and performing a story that is often much more precise and beautiful than speech, and much more intense than longer form writing, where the conversation is performed at some later date and with much less confidence that the reader, the conversant, will understand as immediately or relate as deeply.

Blogging is a kind of slightly more polished IMing. But to the world. The publicness of it matters.

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