TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

plurk

Is Tumblr microblogging?

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As microblogging evolves, I think there are going to be a lot of attempts to define what it is, and what sites qualify. And my own definition is somewhat unevolved at the moment, so I’m opening this one to you.

Do you think Tumblr counts as microblogging, and should be included in the site?

A lot of Tumblelogs tend to be short, sharp updates via the bookmarklet to quickly share a link, image, or video. At first I struggled with the idea of yet another site to sit between my main blog at TheWayoftheWeb, and my Twitter account. But I’ll admit that I didn’t think it through, despite playing around with an account.

I’ve got two blogs including this one, and my first, TheWayoftheWeb is fairly well established (Despite recently moving to WordPress and self-hosting!). They give me the chance to post long form ideas, and develop theories, whilst also getting some interaction through the comments I’m fortunate to receive.

Meanwhile Twitter and Plurk give me as much conversation as I can cope with, within the confines of 140 characters.

But having chatted to two of my colleagues about blogging, Tumblr makes a lot of sense for them. They don’t have the time to commit to a full blog, or the conversation required to get the full value out of Twitter – and yet they both want to have an online presence and a place to share the things they value. And it seems to offer a way to display their personality in a slightly more obvious way than using Del.icio.us.

So that’s my case for why it’s useful, and picking some Tumblelogs at random, they show the short form, frequent updates we’d associate with microblogging. Here’s 3 examples picked totally at random from those listed on the front page of the site:

Example 1.

Example 2.

Example 3.

So what say you? Personally I’m leaning towards inclusion…

Twitter etiquette – are Tweeple a better class of people?

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Every popular social network contains people and accounts which, for one reason or another, are undesirable. Spammers, con artists, egomaniacs (Isn’t that all of us?), the plain offensive etc all inhabit the social world – as they do in the real world.

Recently I unfollowed 3 such accounts on Twitter. None were malicious in the same vein as people setting up phishing scams. But two constantly used it as a platform for personal attacks – either against one individual, or against a group of individuals, without providing anything of value.

A third autofed his latest blog entries but refused to engage in conversation, or even reply to direct messages. That’s just about excusable if you’re constantly breaking lots of news e.g. @BBC for BBC News, or you’ve reached the scale of someone like Robert Scoble, who follows and is followed by over 20,000 people. It’s not ideal, but excusable…but if you’re batting at under 100 for example, then there really is no reason for ignoring anyone who wants to interact with you.

That all might seem a bit negative – but then I flipped it around in my head. I’ve unfollowed 3 people – not had to block them, or complain about them, but just unfollowed them with a simple click of a button. But due to a policy of reading through a few details before adding people, those are 3 of 714 I’m following. So that’s 0.42% of all the people I have chosen to follow, and an even smaller percentage of people that I’ve had any contact with.

It’d be interesting to find out how this compared with other networks, but from a subjective viewpoint, it’s a lot less. And the number one connection tool for irritation still seems to be Myspace.… The perentage on there is probably closer to 20%!

It’s why we persevere with Twitter despite the downtime, and it’s why Plurk is gaining traction. The days of average users amassing 1000s of random contacts for the sake of it is waning by people who actually want to use these tools for a tangible benefit. The days of using them for what my colleague, David Cushman describes as ‘self–forming communities of (global) niche shared interest’ is here for more and more people. And Twitter is all the better for it…

Is Twitter vs Plurk a repeat of Myspace vs Facebook?

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It’s easy to compare the current and growing rivalry between Twitter and Plurk to the rivalry experienced by Myspace and Facebook. And with Facebook recently becoming the biggest social network in the world, could Plurk pull the same trick with microblogging?

Well, for starters there are some slight differences in the two rivalries. Although Myspace became the biggest player in social networking, it didn’t have the first player status Twitter has – that honour belonged to the infamous and yet still running Friendster.

Twitter and Myspace do both fall foul of the fact that user customisation sometimes leads to profiles looking like a car crash, but as Twitter tweaking is more limited, it’s escaped the worst excesses. And while Plurk takes a more stylish route, perhaps in the spirit of Facebook, it’s far more overwhelming, with the horizontal timeline, Karma and cartoon icons.

But the biggest difference between Facebook, Myspace , and even Plurk at this stage from Twitter, is that Twitter is powered by mainly third party applications and integrations. It may be the reason the database is unreliable at the moment, but around 90% of queries come from external applications – not direct via the website. There’s just some of the many, many Twitter tools listed here. It isn’t like Facebook or Myspace, which uses applications as a way to add interaction and entertainment to the network. In this case, the applications can be the only entry to the network for many people.

And yet it’s this that makes me think Twitter will remain the leader in microblogging for a while yet, and is a way from peaking. There’s a limit to how many networks people will join, but Twitter apps can increasingly use the technology for their own devices, and can start to utilise Twitter within other websites. For instance, Chirrup uses Twitter to power blog and website comments.

Imagine more companies using Twitter to converse internally, now that more and more people have grown used to Instant Messaging and Facebook. And more public users of Twitter applications, and aggregators like FriendFeed.

I don’t want to overhype Twitter, despite my addiction (@badgergravling). There’s still a need for social networks, forums, Instant Messaging, email, telephones and even snail mail for different functions. I wouldn’t have started a blog about microblogging otherwise! But just as it’s now a rare event for me to use the postal service, and my email influx has waned, microblogging means IM and social networks are replaced by semi-instantaneous Twittering…

A major problem in promoting Plurk

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It seems as if there are a million Twitter applications, widgets, and ways to publicise your membership and latest Tweets, but things are a bit twickier when it comes to Plurk.

So far, there has been an unofficial API, and third party Plurk tools are thin on the ground. But even more annoyingly, I can’t use the official Plurk widget.

There’s a simple reason. They offer it for users to embed into a Facebook, Myspace, or blog page. But they’ve fixed the width, so trying to display it on this blog, for instance, means the sidebar will be blown apart. And the width is set at 300 pixels wide – way too much for most pages on Facebook or Myspace.

So for the moment, I’ll not be sharing my Plurking as much as my Tweeting.

You can still find me on Twitter. And on Plurk.

Facebook app for Plurk – and unofficial API available…

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Blimey, things are definitely starting to happen outside of Plurk. First came the first Plurk Facebook app, Plurksync, which updates your status with your most recent Plurk. Unfortunately it’s likely to suffer the same problem as status updates via Twitter, when you end up seeing the same message across every service an individual uses.

Although my favourite incident with linking microblogging and Facebook saw friend and colleague David Cushman in a surreal, endless loop of updates between Twitter and Facebook.

And now comes the unofficial, reverse-engineered, not supported by the Plurk team API, RLPLurkAPI provided by Ryan Lim.

Oh, and from the official Plurk blog comes the news that they’ve tweaked the Karma points.

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