Seems like what social media experts are saying the most about Twitter is that it's "real time".

Actually, the truth is that it's more usable.

Blogging is just as much real time as Twitter, in the sense that each blog post is published as the writer wrote it. That is, the content a writer writes is fresh the moment he/she clicked on the "publish" button. That's just as true with Twitter or Blogger.

What social media folks are really trying to say is that Twitter encourages people to write quickly, instead of taking 60 minutes to write a full blog post. But really, Blogger can do just as well. Perhaps it's just that folks don't know how to use Blogger all that well.

• Twitter has a search engine that lets you search tweets
• Blogger also has a search engine that lets you search Blogger blogs



• Twitter keeps messages short and concise, limiting you to 140 characters
• Blogger will also let you write short and concise posts, and will accept 140 characters or less (or more if you want).



• Twitter lets you post tweets using your handheld (iPhone, Blackberry, et al)
• Blogger lets you compose and publish posts using your handheld by composing an e-mail that you set up for your blog, which Blogger publishes immediately.



• Twitter lets you post photos from your handheld
• Blogger lets you post photos from your handheld, using the same e-mail function noted above



• Twitter lets you create RSS feeds of any Twitter search query
• Blogger also lets you create RSS feeds of any Blogsearch query



• Twitter lets you "friend" with other Twitter users, and you can see all your friends tweets in one place
• Blogger also lets you "friend" other blogs, and lets you see the updates on your Blogger homepage



• Twitter will let you reply to other people's tweets
• Blogger will let you post comments on other people's blogs

If anything truly makes Twitter different than Blogger it's that there are so many Twitter tools and apps out there. Blogger doesn't quite have the same third party support, with the exception of Blogger Gadgets that you can add to your blog.

Twitter is not more real time than Blogger, it's that Twitter has so many users posting tweets of news events.

Somehow, somewhere, no figured out that they could use Blogger for the same thing. But if you were to go back to the early 2000s, when Blogger first went live, and look at those blogs, you'll see the same kind of Twitterish content.

In fact, the very first blogger was someone who just posted links with short messages of his web travels. It was his "web log". The folks who created Blogger, simply created a tool that let other people do the same thing.

Over the years, as blogging grew more sophisticated, blog content became more creative, and more commercial. That in turn, encouraged people to take 60 minutes or more just to compose something.

The 140 character constraint in Twitter encourages people to be quick.

Just an FYI, I timed myself writing this blog post, and I took 27 minutes.  ✓