The team over at Advanced Operators just kicked off its inaugural blog carnival post (wikipedia definition), exploring the future of microblogging. Justin posed some questions to get the wheels turning. I picked some to respond to:
- Is microblogging a fad? Does it have any value beyond entertainment?
I don't think it's just a fad - people are really getting into it. But certainly, Twitter and crew are still trying to find their places in the world. At the moment, these tools are to some degree an extension of the IM away message, a mere broadcast of ideas or situations to passers-by. I've also seen the tools equated to the "head-knod" you give to other people as you pass them in the hall, not expecting to get a response, but just in general recognizing their presence. So, in that sense, it will mostly remain as a shout out function, which does serve a niche in online communities: what is top-of-mind. One time, I think from Steve Wrubel, there was actually an instance of breaking news getting distributed on Twitter, one step ahead of the major news outlets, but the only way that would really work is if you constantly monitored the Tweets flying around. - Is microblogging a feature that can be absorbed by larger social networks like MySpace and Facebook? Who will dominate the microblogging sphere and why?
I would think so -- this is how I use it. I use Twitter to power the announcement box (shout outs) on my "professional" technology blog, while I use the Facebook status RSS feed to do the same for my "personal" photo blog. I don't see Twitter itself being the tool we'll all use from here on in, but rather the functionality it inspired: ultra-portable information syndication, for tid-bits that fall below the radar of topics meaty enough to warrant a full blog post. It's more of a stream of consciousness. Where the process breaks down for me is when people post Tweets every 5 seconds about the fact that they are hungry. I use it sparingly, to make announcements not worth blogging about. I see this function being built into ANY application where users spend any amount of time, and need a quick way to give others in the community an idea of their progress or whereabouts above the noise of the regular, on-going content creation.
Another interesting development where this type of data will become more useful, is when RSS filtering tools become mainstream. Take local Portland company Attensa, for example (and for full-disclosure, a client). They have developed a very powerful technology called AttentionStream, which monitors a user's RSS consumption habits, and prioritizes feeds and posts within their RSS reader based on what you pay the most attention to -- what is most important. So in this scenario, you can subscribe to a much more diverse and broad set of feeds, and after a while, let the algorithms bubble up the blog posts and microblogging snippets that are most relevant to you.
Beyond responding to the original post above, I also note that there's been a good turnout so far. I have some feedback from the comments that it generated. One piece in particular, from Adam, struck my interest:
The missing piece, which some are undoubtedly working on, is the connector between these, something to aggregate your digital life. Someone will figure it out and then there’ll be better ways to get a complete view of someone in near real-time.
Well, I have started to construct said missing piece. I am sure numerous people have hacked together something to this end in Yahoo Pipes, but I have a far simpler method. All I have done is subscribed to all my (useful) RSS feeds in Google Reader, added the "LifeFeed" tag to them, and shared the new aggregated feed with the public. Google spits out this page, which I then re-purpose as my Life Feed on my "About Paul Biggs" page. While I am no designer, you get the idea. Works like a charm, and I churn it through FeedBurner to give it a little more functionality. Voila!
Paul Biggs lives in Portland, Oregon where he writes about technology, apps, and gadgets when he can find a spare second.
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