Once upon a time, I lamented a blogging frustration. I found nuggets of articles across the land, and I wanted to share them with my beloved readers. However, try as I might, I just couldn’t make them fit with my blog. I tried writing individual posts for each article expressing why readers should go see the marvels for themselves, but that was too big. I tried collecting a handful to publish at a time (as I had seen other bloggers (like Tim Challies and Thabiti Anyabwile) do), but sometimes the links were particularly significant at certain times, and the rate of finding the treasures was too irregular. I tried posting articles that were only a few lines long for each link, but that was just too small.

Along came my gallant prince, with tales of a mighty weapon called microblogging that might just be the key to my woes. I had heard of one such creature, Twitter, but the tales I knew were about frivilous things like breakfast food. He told me we could wield a microblog in such a way as to put the links on display in a column at the edge of my blog. It fit just right.

He told me tales of Twitter’s cousin identi.ca. It is like Twitter, but it is amazingly transparent, though lacking some of Twitter’s more refined charms. identi.ca would even allow me to write my messages with an instant messaging client and it would take them where I wanted them to go.

Twitter’s fame increased, and many noble men and fair maidens enjoyed its services. I soon discovered that not only did Twitter solve my blogging obstacle, it provided other benefits as well. With a format that was easier to skim than blogs, I followed people on Twitter to get a taste rather than see the whole river of their blog posts. I found Twitter a great herald for requests for prayer and tidings of great joy. Merchants provide wares at discounts (sometimes at no monetary cost).

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits I’ve seen is realizing that my heroes are people too. Wise men eat at Chick-fil-A and "borrow" cell phones. Great men are the source of great laughter. I hope Twitter lives happily for a long time, but I’m grateful for the "mundane" as much as the fairy tales.