Microblogging – small but beautiful

Microblogging is catching the fancy of all, with its power of immediacy.

Bloggers, move over. The age of microblogging has arrived. Fast scoring over traditional blogging, microblogging is keeping the hip and tech-savvy busy while travelling, shopping or digging into pizzas at their favourite food joint.

For those not in the know, microblogging is the practice of shooting micro posts to a personal blog on a microblogging web site. Once you microblog, you have the option of either making your post public on a microblogging website or distribute them to a group of subscribers. You can microblog using text, audio or even video. Your pals find your posts online, receive instant updates messages on their desktops or read them as text messages on their cell.

So be it your take on the recent vegetarianism wave, your fab haircut-went-wrong agony or the latest from the workplace gossip machine, you instantly get your friend’s feedback. And brevity being the soul of wit, the posts are kept short, crisp and juicy (between 140-200 characters). Can blogging get any smarter?

What has made microblogging popular hit is its immediacy and high portability. Also the pressure of blogging often is not even there!

The content is brief. You can quickly update your microblog, read what others have to say and leave a comment in response. And if you have a cellphone, you can blog on the go. Many social networking websites are promoting microblogging as a great way to connect.

Microblogging platforms have developed their own set of terms to differentiate microblogging from traditional blogging. Here’s a quick lowdown of a microblogger’s jargon: Twitter (a leading microblogging service) users call posts "tweets", the community is called "twitosphere", posts that are regretted are called "mistweets" and "Twitterrhea" means sending too many messages.
Micrblogging is not only limited to going gaga over the flick you watched last weekend or your latest Gucci catch. It means serious business too. Media organizations in the west, including The New York Times and the BBC are sending headlines and links in microblog posts. Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama have Twitter profiles, checked out by friends and fans.