Technology Tuesday/Web Wednesday Archive

What is microblogging, anyway?

Microblogging is the practice of sending brief posts to a personal blog or a microblogging Web site. Each entry can be called a micropost. The appeal of microblogging is both its immediacy and portability.

So?

Sincemicroposts are typically very short (less than 200 characters), a microblogger can send updates often enough to keep subscribers updated as events happen, no matter if they are large or small. Even political candidates like Barack Obama and John Edwards have used microblogging to send details from their campaign activities.

How to Microblog

You can use a traditional blog, such as Wordpress or LiveJournal but you can also set up a microblog using a service like Twitter or Jaiku. Facebook and MySpace have “status updates,” which are also microblogging services. Pownce is another service, from the founders of Digg. It combines microblogging with social invitations and file-sharing. What you choose to use really depends on what you want from such a service.

Twitter?http://www.twitter.com

Twitter is one of the leaders in the microblogging scene. From their site:

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?

It is easy to get started. Create a twitter account and then you can send your posts, called tweets to your blog using a variety of methods including:

• Cell Phone – using text messages from phone
• Web Browser – via twitter site or a plug-in (Twitbin) or your own blog feed (TwitterFeed)
  • Twitbin (firefox extension): http://www.twitbin.com/
  • Twitterfeed (feed your blog to Twitter): http://twitterfeed.com/
• Instant Messaging (IM) – like GTalk or Yahoo Messenger
• Widgets in portals/personal homepages or other third party applications

Tumblr? http://www.tumblr.com

If you want to blog mostly to provide a stream of things you find on the web rather than sending a stream about what you are doing, then Tumblr might be a better fit. From their site:

Tumblelogs are the refreshingly simple new way to share anything you find, love, hate ….

Tumblr provides a very easy way to get into blogging without the major learning curve of setting up your own blog. You can easily post links to videos, text and photos, URLs, quotes, and more.

You can post to Tumblr in several ways, just like with Twitter:

• Bookmarklet: a button you can add to your browser’s Bookmarks Bar
• Cell Phone Posting: Post text and photos directly from your mobile phone. You can use the Subject line to attach a caption to photos.
• Tumblet – Mac users, install the Tumblet Dashboard Widget

You can also view Tumblr via a mobile phone that can browse the web. To browse your tumblelog on a phone or PDA, just add “/mobile” to the URL.

Our Two Sample Sites

• ETS Tumblr Site: http://pstcc-ets.tumblr.com
• ETS Twitter Site: http://twitter.com/pstcc_ets

Other Microblogging Options

• Jaiku: http://www.jaiku.com

• Pownce: http://www.pownce.com (invitation only at this point)

• Soup: http://www.soup.io/

Helpful Resources

Your Guide to Micro-blogging and Twitter: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/05/for_the_uberconnectedyour_guid.html

Microblogging (Wikipedia):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging

Comparing the Top 4 Mini-blogging Options (comparing Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku and Pownce)
http://wisdump.com/web/comparing-the-top-4-mini-blog-options/