Originally posted over on my Livejournal blog.
When I start talking about
Twitter, or microblogging, people look at me, and usually say, “Why would you want to do that?” I talk about keeping touch with people, virtual watercoolers, conversation starting, homeschooling interaction with my geek daughter… lots of topics. Because we’re all here online together right now, I can recommend that you take a look at the definitive YouTube video on
Twitter in Plain English.
If video doesn’t do it for you, here’s what Twitter is to me.
First off, Twitter starts you off with the question of, “What are you doing?”
Notice that number in the corner there, it encourages you to enter a 140 character response. Then your post gets put into a stream of other entries, from your contacts.
Okay. Why do I care that Andy’s hands are sticky… Maybe, I don’t. Maybe, though, his hands are sticky because he’s having another of his famous snacks. The SocNet community checks in with Andy to see what some of the best snacks are, and what are the best ways to eat them. Everybody needs a hobby.
While you think that this may be a kind of micro-niche web application, there are a bunch of micro-blogging sites out there now. The Social Networking community jumps around, testing new tools. I’ve got accounts on Brightkite, Jaiku, Twitter, and Pownce.
I’m busy trying to asses whether or not I should pick one of these sites and stick with it. To that end, I’ve created a spreadsheet (back off, I’m a geek, I know it) that compares the top three contenders for my main micro-blogging site. I’ve rated them on character limits, adding links or photos, contacts/friends adding, as well as some of their mobile/smartphone features. I know that I’ve not captured all the features that should be compared, and so I’m reaching out to the community to see what else should be covered, and what those features are. I’m also sure there are other micro-blogging sites that aren’t in my brief list.
If you’d like to help out comparing these metrics, please check out the sheet over on Google Docs.
If you want to be involved in editing the sheet, please drop me a line at wholelotofnonsense at gmail dot com and put “Micro-Blogging Comparison” in the email subject line.
