My good friend Kevin Kline recently posed a question on one of his blogs: what is the best frequency, depth, and type of blog posting? Are readers most interested in more thorough postings that are more akin to full fledged magazine articles, with the understanding that those will appear far less often since they are more time consuming to create? Or is it better to post more frequent, but perhaps less comprehensive postings? Most of these postings would be less than a few hundred words; at the extreme they could be almost Twitter-ish in length and content.

I've been pondering that same question for quite some time. It started when I began evaluating a new utility for SQL Server. Should I create a post that shares with the world that I have found this utility, that I'm eager to evaluate it, and that asks for others to share their experiences with it? That eventually may lead to a relatively lengthy review of the product.

Or is it more beneficial to perform the entire evaluation before mentioning it in a blog and later post a single comprehensive review of the software utility? The risk there is that I will never feel that I've reached a point where I've learned enough to provide a good and insightful review and thus never write about it.

I've bounced between the two extremes, trying to find a happy median. So far I've decided to err on the longer side, with postings that range in the 500 - 600 word range.

However, while attending DevLink the past weekend, I learned how Twitter can be used to bridge the gap. I'll admit that I've been somewhat under a rock with regards to social networking sites. I just haven't really made the time to figure them out and see how they can be used in a good way. I had always rather naively assumed that they would be yet another distraction and a time sink. However, thanks to Microsoft's Brian H Prince's soft skills presentation at DevLink, I'm beginning to see that they can be used in a more productive and positively engaging way.

So, I've created a Twitter account that will give me a forum for posting those more frequent, less comprehensive posts. If you're interested and you use Twitter, check it out, http://www.twitter.com/joewebb.

If you're a Twitter person, I'd love to hear your experiences on how it can be used in a productive manner. I'm still a neophyte in this social networking arena.

Cheers!

Joe