Apr 25 2009
The Future of Microblogging
What is microblogging?
Joi Ito described it as “the rapid communication in its purest state, with the immediacy of SMS but extremely versatile both as a stand in”. The success of this innovation lies in its ability to catch the “minute”, to a stream channel to life, relationships and thinking of its users.
This tool, derived from conventional blog, provides a link between social networks and mobile phones. In recent times, has revolutionized the blogosphere. Its users are increasing at a pace “we probably have not seen before.”
Like it or not, its advent marks a transformation in the concept of connectivity in force so far. And the struggle for power sharing on the web has just began.
Microblogging Phenomenon
A microblogging service is a web application that allows you to insert messages reduced by way of a blog post, with a limit of around 140 characters, about the size of an SMS-page and with a high refresh rate.
But the uniqueness of microblogging is not clear from the obvious from their name, but its multi-device condition. More than a blog in small, since the post is not only the web, but simultaneously, via email, mobile telephony and instant messaging.
So, may be defined as the microblogging phenomenon that occurs when you combine a blog, a social network and access it from mobile devices. The concept that has just over a year, exploded in recent months with the help of Twitter, the pioneer and most popular microblogging service.
From the beginning of the inexplicable success of Twitter that revolutionizes the concept of microblogging and the emergence of other microblogging services that struggle to get a piece of cake but fail to meet the critical mass.
Twitter, on the other hand, defines a new mode of communication. It helps obtain a more synchronous way to communicate in real time than email, but more relaxed that instant messaging.
Competition to Twitter?
Is there still a possibility for those services such as Pownce, Jaiku, Plurk, Jisko, Identi.ca, and YouAre, among others, to compete against the unstoppable growth of Twitter?
While none has yet made a feature-killer, what functionality these microblogging services have that differentiate the standard offered by Twitter?
Yes, Twitter was the first, which has the best API and it has managed to reach an acceptable critical mass where its community is stronger than the service itself. It’s pretty amazing how Twitter remains strong despite the hundreds of crashes, maintenance and other technical problems.
Pownce added groups, the possibility to send our messages publicly, at a certain contact or contacts contacts, our groups, or as a completely private messages. The great challenge was to upload files (up to date with the free account with 100MB or 250MB with the payment account), an integrated audio player in the system. It was the first time that integrated multimedia features in microblogging.
Jaiku is the boom that began on lifestreaming integrated with microblogging. The problem is that the excessive noise produced mixed messages view all did so complicated to follow, despite containing groups in its latest updates.
Plurk combines a little of everything showing images and videos with its corresponding player, a horizontal timeline to display messages while requiring greater presence and attention that the rest can see the messages read, review conversations, etc. .
Jisko Spanish is the newest microblogging service that has formed on an online community and publishing the system as open source, moving rapidly in functionality but that does not make a feature-killer beyond karma and the platform itself, insufficient to reach the critical mass. They have just released the latest revision of the system, v2, a couple of days ago.
Identi.ca arrived recently and emulates a procedure similar to Jisko with less functionality and little interest in the long term.
YouAre, although I have tested during their entire development, this week will begin to send invitations and integrates a bit of all previous systems such as location, although manual, lifestreaming in a separate tab (and cleaner than Jaiku), various types of messages but limited to images, videos and links.
The question is, Will any of these microblogging services be able to stand the test of time, or be the Twitter-killer?
