The advent of Microblogging

There's blogging...and there's microblogging.

Microblogging is just like traditional blogging. It allows you to broadcast your activities to the world (wide web) through words, videos, audio or photos. The catch is...you have to compact everything in 200 characters or less. (Yes, inclusive of symbols and special characters.)

Do you tweet? You know, that thing that keeps non-popular people like us at par with celebrities like Oprah, Justin Bieber, and Kris Aquino. Twitter is so popular that even Facebook (the top most visited website) is on it...and vice versa!

Hey! Homer Simpson's on Twitter!

What got everyone -- young and old, celebrity and not -- tweeting?
1. Easy to use (just answer: "What's happening?")
2. Publishes in real time
3. Connecting with people is as easy as "following"
4. Most microblogging sites alow users to update through IM or SMS

But it's not really just Twitter. There are other microblogging sites that are just as interesting and easy to use.

Plurk, according to the developers, is "a really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life in deliciously digestible chunks. Low in fat, 5 calories per serving, yet chock full of goodness." Just like Twitter, status updates are limited to 140 characters only. What sets Plurk apart from other microblogs is that it features a drop-down mini chat box that allows other Plurkers to reply to your post. That and the selection of interesting Plurk creatures and emoticons you can display on your timeline.

Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog. While Tumblr really doesn't have any character limit, most users actually prefer short posts. Another great thing about this site is that you can create more than one Tumblelogs under the same e-mail. How that's advantageous is up to you.


Facebook is also considered as a microblog for its quick status update feature.

Other microblogging sites currently popular in other countries include 12 Seconds, Posterous, and FriendFeed.