| Microblogging | 2007-06-03 14:34 0 comments |
 by Flemming FunchI don't jump on all technofads right away. Like, I couldn't really see the point of Twitter. Why would I want to get an SMS about whatever somebody I know is having for lunch? I wouldn't have to, of course, as one could configure it differently. But the horror of that thought, to be woken up in the middle of the night to hear that somebody on the other side of the world is standing in line at McDonalds, kept me from even looking at it. And of course I didn't quite get it. It is indeed an excellent idea. The cool idea is microblogging. Instead of having to feel obliged to write whole articles on important subjects with well reasoned arguments, one can post one-line snapshots. Where one is, what one is doing, what one is thinking, etc. Which one can do often and easily, from the web, from IM programs, by SMS. And people who know you can keep on eye on your activities and thoughts, whenever and however they feel like it. Personally, I do sometimes get blogging anxiety, in the form of thinking that if I post something, it has to be of a certain volume and quality, particularly if I haven't written anything for a little while. In the meantime I've been doing lots of things, but maybe nothing that overcame my threshold of being bloggable. But for a microblog, the threshold is much lower. That I'm sleeping or eating breakfast is perfectly newsworthy, in part because the one-liner about it isn't going to bother anybody, and on the contrary it puts me on the map as a blip. And maybe I do get a brilliant idea after breakfast and post that too. Twitter is the most well-known service, but I like Jaiku better. Quite a few more useful features. And it seems to be more popular with the European crowd, and we've sort of seen it be born over the last several Reboot conferences. I'm ffunch on Jaiku. And also on twitter, although I'm not likely to use that very much. It only gets fun when you have a list of contacts of course. But then it is ambient intimacy, alright. You can easily maintain a peripheral awareness of what a whole bunch of your friends are up to, without spending too much energy on it. |