Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Micro Blogging Advantages and Disadvantages

Micro blogging is sharing frequent and brief information in web through specified platform. Generally micro blogging services allow its users to send and read other users’ updates through text-based posts. But now this has been changed and it can be any sort of input like text, video, audio etc… Text messages are uploaded to a microblogging service such as Twitter, Jaiku and others, then distributed to group members. All parties subscribed in the targeted group are instantly notified of the microblog, enabling groups to keep tabs on one another’s activities in real time.
Micro blogging refers to the posting of very short updates about oneself. It is in contrast to long-form blogging, where there are usually at least a few hundred words. Microblog posts usually involve a few hundred characters or less. Instead of posting a message on their regular blog, people who microblog use Web services designed to make microblogging very easy.

So What for Micro Blogging?

As like other internet tools micro blogging can also be used for various purposes. I listed few below,

  • Stay in touch with kith n kin.
  • Stay linked for fun
  • Have useful discussion on selected topic
  • Clear you doubts from experts


  • Business people can use this for the following

  • Sell / market products
  • To get user / customer feedback
  • As a live support tool
  • To make brand awarness
  • The best example would be http://twitter.com/woot


  • Twitter is the most popular micro blogging platform. But that’s not the only one. I have compiled few of my favouries here.
  • Twitter
  • Jaiku
  • Pownce
  • Tumblr
  • Soup
  • Streem
  • Chyrp

  • But sadly pownce is being shutting down. Pownce blog announced that officially and pownce team is joining the team at SixApart. And they assured that they would be back in action in 2009 with great features. I hope this happens since I like pownce personally a lot.

    Advantages of Micro Blogging:
  • Updates you make in micro blogging sites can be visible to community members to all users depending upon the platform you use.
  • Unlike with messengers were we type messages to a person (or rarely a group), with micro blogging many more people interact at the same time as they can all see your messages.
  • Instead of spending hours together to narrate a blog post, micro blogging platform can be used effectively to share things you wish to.


  • Disadvantages of Micro Blogging:
    The biggest disadvantages of micro blogging would be the limitation in characters.
  • In twitter the character is limited to just 140.
  • Micro blogging is also prone to getting off topic quite easily.
  • Which micro blogging site you prefer? Share it in comments!

    1 comments:

    Marie said...

    Twitter is a great micro blogging site, one that I use on a daily basis for business. it seems that the site has become a great business tool rather than a fun chat site. Only concern is how long will it last for free.

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