I’m not an early adopter. The rebel in me scoffs at fads and hypes. Before i adopt a new idea or habit, i have to poke at it until it fits.
But, as i get older, i try to convince myself to be more hype-tolerant – there might be something to it, after all – so i decided to look into the phenomenon of microblogging, and be as neutral as possible.
What is microblogging ? Twitter’s FAQ:
Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends. Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool.
The description is pretty accurate, when you see what twitterbirds come up with:
“Wondering why our meeting was just cancelled.” – MissJenny
“watching TV, nothing good by the way!!!” – HernanGarcia
Interfaces to twitter: web, phone text and IM. The phone feature required me to text to a UK number, which is not exactly free. There’s a few extensions for firefox, and even a dedicated twitter client..
What would be the reason behind microblogging’s success ? The main feature of the human mind is endless curiosity. It has its good sides, since without our need to find out we wouldn’t have, say, antibiotics or microchips.
The less noble side of curiosity is a tendency to look through other people’s windows and see what they’re doing. I suppose microblogging is a fairly consensual way of doing this.
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How can microblogging be useful ?
- For companies, institutions, or John Edwards, obviously it’s a good PR tool – running communication
- “blogging for lazy or busy people”.
- family logistics: messages like ‘just went to the supermarket’, ‘i called the plumber’, ‘picked up the kids’
- like the twitter definition says – if friends or loved ones are far away, it can provide insight in their lives
- record-your-life: real-time journal of one-liners and trivia
I decided, in my mood of objective evaluation, to subscribe to Twitter, the main player in the field, and have a look. So i did. To be honest, I had a hell of a writer’s block – call me overly modest, but what i had for dinner is not that interesting (to me or to anyone else). You probably have to let go, get into the spirit to do a running comment, without caring about the information content or quality.
OK, i’m still not really convinced that it’s any kind of step for mankind.
However dubious i still find the whole idea, i think this mashup of map and twitter is quite poetic: you can see people commenting their lives all over the globe.
Other sites for microblogging: dodgeball, tumblr, VelvetPuffin
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