Micro-blogging
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Micro blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web.
The content of a micro-blog differs from a traditional blog in that it is typically smaller in actual size and aggregate file size. A single entry could consist of a single sentence or fragment or an image or a brief, ten second video. But, still, its purpose is similar to that of a traditional blog. Users micro-blog about particular topics that can range from the simple, such as "what one is doing at a given moment," to the thematic, such as "sports cars," to business topics, such as particular products. Many micro-blogs provide short commentary on a person-to-person level, share news about a company's products and services, or provide logs of the events of one's life.
The findings of a study by Emily Pronin of Princeton University and Harvard University's Daniel Wegner, pointing to a link between the short bursts of activity that microblogging frequently involves and feelings of elation, power and creativity, have been cited as a possible reason for the rapid growth of microblogging. * [1].
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[edit] Services
In May 2007, 111 micro-blogging sites were counted internationally.[2] Among the most notable services are Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku and identi.ca.
More recently, varieties of services and software with the feature of micro-blogging have been developed. Plurk has a timeline view which integrates video and picture sharing. Pownce (developed by Digg founder Kevin Rose with three other developers) integrated micro-blogging with file sharing and event invitations. Following its acquisition by SixApart Pownce has been shut down effective December 15, 2008 while an upcoming replacement "Motion" is in the works.
Rakawa.net documents and informs about daily accomplishments of the users based on the question "What have you achieved today?" Traction TeamPage is this first integration of micro-blogging as an interface over any designated workspace in an Enterprise 2.0 suite[3].
Other leading social networking websites Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and XING also have their own micro-blogging feature, better known as status updates.
With the growth of micro-blogging, many users want to maintain presence in more than one of these social networks. Services such as Socialthing and Profilactic will aggregate micro-blogs from multiple social networks into a single list. Services such as Ping.fm will send out your micro-blog to multiple social networks.
[edit] Usages
Several studies, most notably by Harvard Business School and Sysomos, have tried to analyze the usage behavior of Microblogging services.[4][5] Many of these studies show that for services such at Twitter, there is a small group of active users contributing to most of the activity.[6] Sysomos' Inside Twitter survey, based on more than 11 million users, shows that 10% of Twitter users account for 86% of all activity. In comparison, top-15% of Wikipedia users contribute to 90% of edits, pointing to the more skewed behavior of Twitter demographics.
Twitter, Facebook and other micro-blogging services are also becoming a platform for marketing and public relations[7], with a sharp growth in the number of social media marketers. The Sysomos study shows that this specific group of marketers on Twitter is much more active than general user population, with 15% following more than 2,000 people. This is in sharp contrast to only 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.[5]
Microblogging services have also emerged as a important source of real-time news updates for recent crisis situations, such as Mumbai terror attacks or Iran protests.[8][9] Short nature of updates allow users to post news items quickly in real-time, reaching its audience in seconds.
[edit] Micro-blogging for organizational usage
Micro-blogging has the potential to become a new informal communication medium especially for collaborative work. Over the last few years communication patterns have shifted primarily from face-to-face communication to more online communication in E-mail, IM, and other tools. As more collaboration is being done remotely through technology, there are relatively fewer opportunities for face to face informal conversations. In addition because of time constraints at work due to employee downsizing there is more concern about interruptions along with convenience brought by IM and E-mail.
Many individuals like sharing the whereabouts and status updates in Micro-blogging. This highlights micro-blogging’s potential to support informal communication among co- workers. The areas where it looks to impact are the informational effects and the social and emotional effects. The informational effects include increased opportunistic valuable information sharing, expertise realizing, building and maintaining common ground. The social and emotional effects are mainly enhancing the feeling of connectedness among co-workers.
[edit] Issues with Micro-blogging
The main issues with micro blogging are privacy, security, and integration. Privacy is a major issue due to the concerns of broadcasting social or work information to everyone who follows their feed. About security, people are worried about the public seeing possible sensitive work information on public micro-blogging like Twitter. Integration is probably the hardest issue to overcome basically because the company and its employees have to adapt micro-blogging into the corporate culture. This will take time since companies need to recognize its value before they embrace.
[edit] Related concepts
Instant messaging systems display status, but generally only one of a few choices, such as: available, off-line, away. Away messages (messages displayed when the user is away) form a kind of micro-blogging.
In the Finger protocol, the .project and .plan files are sometimes used for status updates similar to micro-blogging.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Could this be a factor in the allure of microblogs? on Nav Dhami's blog
- ^ Article on thws.cn. A Chinese site, but the article is in English. Retrieved August 4, 2008.
- ^ Live Blog 21 November 2008 Announcement by Traction Software
- ^ "New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets". Harvard Business School. 2009-06-01. http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-23.
- ^ a b "Inside Twitter: An In-depth Look Inside the Twitter World". Sysomos. 2009-06-10. http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/. Retrieved on 2009-06-23.
- ^ "The More Followers You Have, The More You Tweet. Or Is It The Other Way Around?". TechCrunch. 2009-06-10. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/10/the-more-followers-you-have-the-more-you-tweet-or-is-it-the-other-way-around/. Retrieved on 2009-06-23.
- ^ "Businesses using Twitter, Facebook to market goods". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 2009-06-21. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09172/978727-96.stm. Retrieved on 2009-06-23.
- ^ "First Hand Accounts Of Terrorist Attacks In India On Twitter, Flickr". TechCrunch. 2008-11-26. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/26/first-hand-accounts-of-terrorist-attacks-in-india-on-twitter/. Retrieved on 2009-06-23.
- ^ "Twitter on Iran: A Go-to Source or Almost Useless?". 2009-06-22. http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/technology/2009/June/Twitter-on-Iran-a-Go-to-Source-or-Almost-Useless.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-23.
[edit] External links
- Squid Micro-Blogging ASP.NET Library
- Microblogging.com The latest news from the microblogging world.
- Microblogger microblogging resource.
- Microblink, microblogging news and reviews for platforms, tools and services
- Microblogging The potential of microblogging in organizations
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