Micro-Blogging - Blogging Short and Sweet

There is blogging; there is video blogging or rather, vlogging for most people. And recently, blogging has taken steps to turn micro and compact. From there, a new form of blogging takes place in the media of today; micro-blogging.

(An example of a micro-blogging website)

Micro-blogging has its features similar to blogging (hence, it retains the name ‘blogging’ in it). However, unlike blogging where you can write as long as you want, micro-blogging allows its users to type in brief 140-character updates on the go through a mobile device, instant messenger, or the web (Gershik, 2008; Glaser, 2007).

Micro-blogging has their own services such as Jaiku, Plurk, Yammer, and such. However, the most popular micro-blogging service would be Twitter. Twitter was developed in 2007 and was made popular amongst technology experts at the 2007 Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas (Glaser, 2007).
Of course, to most of us, we do not really see the use of micro-blogging as we can just blog normally. This would probably apply to blog addicts, but to some other people, micro-blogging has proven to be quite useful. Glaser (2007) states the media companies such as BBC, The New York Times, and Al Jazeera are trying out Twitter as a way to send messages and link to stories in a short span of time.

As of now, Twitter seems to be the one taking over the micro-blogging community. But soon, a new micro-blogging service would join the ranks of Twitter. Developed by Evan Podroumo, the co-founder of Wikitravel, it is called Identica (Terdiman, 2008).


In short, micro-blogging is still a very new addition to services like blogging and vlogging. Perhaps in years to come, micro-blogging would be of great use, particularly to media companies.

Imagine all the updates you can do within minutes. Grand, isn’t it?






Reference:

Glaser, M., 2007, Your Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter, Media Shift, viewed 13 November, 2008 http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/05/your-guide-to-micro-blogging-and-twitter135.html

Gershik, S., 2008, What is Micro-blogging?, The Innovative Marketer, viewed 13 November, 2008 http://www.theinnovativemarketer.com/2008/05/what-is-microbl.html

Terdiman, D., 2008, Taking Twitter with open-source software, Gaming and Culture, CNet News, viewed 13 November, 2008 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10058946-52.html