Microblogging

This is Michael's blog on Microblogging. Microblogging is a smaller, simpler and easier from of blogging. Sites such as Jaiku and Twitter use microblogging. Microblogging is basically a form of blog that gives an update of whatever the microblogger writes to those who follow whim or her. Importantly, it is accessible by portable handsets and mobile phones. For example, you can get a kind of RSS feed to your phone from whoever’s microblog you follow and it will give you live updates from them, just like sending a text. Facebook has a form of microblogging called ‘status updates’. Write something in your status and your friends will immediately see it if they are logged into Facebook, and you will see anything your friends write.Machines and computers can also microblog. For example, the Tower Bride Twitter simply has some computer linked up to its systems. It posts a sentence saying ‘opening for’ or ‘closing for’ whichever ship passed through, and then the time. The houseplant Twitter has a device that measures the water levels in the soil at regular intervals and then sends a post that either tells the % water in the soil or says ‘water me please’ if it drops below a certain level. The River Thames Twitter gets data about high and low tides from some other source and then puts it into a post saying ‘if you hurry, you’ll catch my next high/low tide which is at …’.Twitter and Jaiku are an alternative to Blogger for people who don’t want to receive extremely long posts and want to stay in touch with friends easily. As Jyri Engeström‘s slideshow said, ‘the future is here, its just not evenly distributed yet.