New Media and Microblogging
From Baruchnewmedia
Introduction to Micro-blogging
A micro-blog is an Internet technology that enables users to publish very short sentences or even statements in the form of short posts distributed by instant messages, mobile phones, email or the Web. With regard to audience, these posts can be made available to anyone on the internet or to a targeted audience. When these services started out, they were more or less used to share trivial information or for giving answers to questions like ‘What am I doing?’ with large audiences. An example of such a method is the status box on social networking site like Facebook. However, users have quickly outgrown the ordinariness of these functions and have contributed to micro-blogs becoming far more sophisticated. Micro-blogs often seem like mini blogs and are a part of the evolution of blogs in general. They enable the user to post data in the form of ‘streams of consciousness’ and this information are communicated to the world at large.
Micro-blogging in the Business Field
Initially, younger users and people involved in technology were the first to use micro-blogging. However, more and more businesses are turning to the service now. Companies use micro-blogging to establish awareness and expertise for a company. This transform into building brand name by frequent posts on a particular subject, therefore the company logo and branding should be presented in the micro-blog page. Micro-blogs offer a great opportunity to expand the business network and add contacts. Although selling on micro-blogs is not encouraged, businesses may utilize it to create awareness about the benefits of goods and services to new markets. Additionally, customer service updates may be provided using this tool. A good example of a company that does this is a Texas-based organic food business -'Whole Foods, which adds value by using Twitter to post on events in the community and organic topics as well.
Micro blogging Sites
Twitter (created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey) is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. Twitter is the third most used social network based on the count of 55 million monthly visits. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a monthly growth of 1,382 percent.
- [Twitter]
Related Article: [1]
Posterous
Posterous is a simple micro- blogging platform, which was started in May 2009. It boasts integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogger, Picasa, Wordpress, Facebook and a handful of others Updating to Posterous is similar to other blogging platforms. It is particularly designed for mobile blogging. Mobile methods include sending an email, with attachments of photos, MP3s, documents, and video. Posterous has its own URL shortening service that will shorten a custom URL to http://post.ly/______. Posterous allows you to point the DNS listing for a domain name or sub domain you already own to your Posterous account. This makes it easy to have a site hosted by Posterous that uses your own domain name.
PicPosterous
In August 2009, Posterous launched PicPosterous, an iPhone application for quickly posting photos to a posterous page.
FriendFeed
FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates. It is possible to use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share, as well as originate new posts-discussions and comment with friends. The goal of FriendFeed is to make content on the Web more relevant and useful by using existing social network as a tool for discovering interesting information. Users can be an individual, business or organization. The founders are all former Google Inc. employees who were involved in the launch of such services as Gmail and Google Maps. On August 10, 2009, Facebook Inc. agreed to acquire FriendFeed. FriendFeed was bought for $15 million in cash, and $32.5 million in Facebook stock.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users are able to "follow" other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Users can like or reblog other blogs on the site. The service emphasizes customizability and ease of use. While Posterous and Tumblr are very similar, Posterous has much stronger cross-media integration, although Tumblr has a lot more flexibility as far as design and styling options. David Karp founded Tumblr in 2007 while Jeff Rock created the tumblr app for the iPhone.
- [Tumblr]
Dailybooth
Daily Booth is a photo blogging website designed for users to take a photo of themselves every day with a caption, in order to document and share their life with others, thus the slogan "your life in pictures." It is similar to social-networking websites such as Twitter in that you can follow other users and allow them to follow you in turn and get real-time updates on what other people are doing. The user base is geared towards teens. In August, 2009, the site was reported to have over 3 million unique visitors a month with a growth rate of about 35% a month. DailyBooth was founded and opened in February 2009 by Jon Wheatley and lead developer Ryan Amos.
