[bachmeier]

> But Twitter gives you an audience (and retweets).

It only gives you an audience and retweets if you already have an audience and they retweet you. If I posted a Twitter thread, it would be nothing but crickets. It's extremely difficult to build up a Twitter following of 10,000 that are willing to interact with you and retweet your stuff in 2021 unless lots of people know you outside of Twitter. For the most part, the days of Twitter interaction are over. These days, it's mostly about self-promotion and existing brands.

[macintux]

How much harder is it to build an audience for a blog?

All it takes is one retweet to give you a massive engagement boost, so you don’t even need an audience to have an impact on Twitter.

[bachmeier]

I'm not saying anything about building an audience for a blog, only that Twitter is useless for nearly everyone. The massive engagement boost from one retweet is meaningless in terms of building an audience or having an impact outside of that tweet. A blog can get indexed by Google and bring in folks ten years from now. Tweets, in contrast, have a lifetime of a few hours and then they disappear into the ether. I'd much rather have a post hit the front page of HN than get 50 retweets (which would be in the extreme right tail of all tweets).

[Jcowell]

This is untrue, tweets are also index into Google (just not as rapidly) and tweets often resurface via images. Many Twitter moments are reminiscent by users via retweets or screenshot posts.

Authors often retweet their own post and even pin them to increase their longevity, giving a tweet a much longer shell life for engagement than a hyperlink.

That’s not to mentioned when the tweet is shared on other platforms like HN and more noticeably Reddit.

[mraza007]

I agree with your comments, In blogging its your own like you own the content plus its for the long term.

[dropnerd]

both platforms have many writers that are successfully building an audience