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Microblogging

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"Status update" redirects here. For the 2018 film, see Status Update.

Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts[1][2][3] (or status updates on a minority of websites like Meta Platforms'). Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",[1] which may be the major reason for their popularity.[4] Some popular social networks such as X (Twitter), Threads, Tumblr, Mastodon, Bluesky and Instagram can be viewed as collections of microblogs.

As with traditional blogging, users post about topics ranging from the simple, such as "what I'm doing right now", to the thematic, such as "sports cars". Commercial microblogs also exist to promote websites, services, and products and to promote collaboration within an organization.

Some microblogging services offer privacy settings, which allow users to control who can read their microblogs or alternative ways of publishing entries besides the web-based interface. These may include text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail, digital audio, or digital video.

Origin

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Short text posts on a 2008 blog

The first micro-blogs were known as tumblelogs. The term was coined by programmer Jonathan Gillette in a blog post on April 12, 2005, while describing Leah Neukirchen's Anarchaia.[5]

Blogging has mutated into simpler forms (specifically, link- and the mob- and AUD- and vid- variant), but I don't think I've seen a blog like Chris Neukirchen's [sic] Anarchaia, which fudges together a bunch of disparate forms of citation (links, quotes, flickerings) into a very long and narrow and distracted tumblelog.

Jason Kottke described tumblelogs on October 19, 2005:[6]

A tumblelog is a quick and dirty stream of consciousness, a bit like a remaindered links style linklog but with more than just links. They remind me of an older style of blogging, back when people did sites by hand, before Movable Type made post titles all but mandatory, blog entries turned into short magazine articles, and posts belonged to a conversation distributed throughout the entire blogosphere. Robot Wisdom and Bifurcated Rivets are two older style weblogs that feel very much like these tumblelogs with minimal commentary, little cross-blog chatter, the barest whiff of a finished published work, almost pure editing...just a way to quickly publish the "stuff" that you run across every day on the web

Manton Reece, founder of Micro.blog, defines Microblogging thus:[7]

A microblog post should have these qualities:

  • Should have a feed, usually RSS or JSON Feed
  • Does not have an RSS item title.
  • Contains short post text, usually 280 characters or less.

However, by 2006 and 2007, the word microblog was used more widely for services provided by established sites like Tumblr and Twitter, some of which do not have RSS-like feeds.

A "tweet" posted to Twitter in 2007

As of May 2007, there were 111 microblogging sites in various countries.[citation needed] Among the most notable services are Twitter, Tumblr, Mastodon, Micro.blog, FriendFeed, Plurk, Jaiku and identi.ca. Different versions of services and software with microblogging features have been developed. Plurk has a timeline view that integrates video and picture sharing. Flipter uses microblogging as a platform for people to post topics and gather audience's opinions. PingGadget is a location-based microblogging service. Pownce, developed by the Digg founder Kevin Rose among others, integrated microblogging with file sharing and event invitations. Pownce was merged into SixApart in December 2008.[8]

Other social networking websites Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Diaspora, JudgIt and XING, also have their own microblogging feature, better known as "status updates". Status updates are usually more restricted than actual microblogging in terms of writing.[citation needed] Any activity involving posting short messages can be classified as microblogging although it is usually not considered a microblogging "site" or "service" if it is a secondary, rather than principal service, provided there.[citation needed]

Services such as Lifestream and Snapchat will aggregate microblogs from multiple social networks into a single list, but other services, such as Ping.fm, will send out the microblog to multiple social networks.[citation needed] Services such as Instagram and Whatsapp showcase 'status update' features for users to quickly engage with one another [9][10]

Non-Chinese microblogging services, such as X(Twitter), Facebook, Plurk and Tumblr are censored in China. Chinese Weibo services such as Sina Weibo are available to the Chinese people, offering similar functionality to X(Twitter) and Facebook. They provide microposting, allow users to comment on each other's posts, allow posting with graphical emoticons, and support inclusion of images, music and video files.[citation needed] A survey by the Data Center of China Internet from 2010 showed that Chinese microblog users most often pursued content that was created by friends or experts in a specific field or was related to celebrities.[citation needed]

Usage

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Several studies have tried to analyze user behavior on microblogging services. They include extensive studies on Twitter in 2009, by researchers at Harvard Business School and at Sysomos.[11][12] Results indicated that for services such as Twitter, a small group of active users generate most of the activity.[13] Sysomos' Inside Twitter survey, which was based on more than 11 million users, showed that in 2009, 10% of Twitter users accounted for 86% of all activity.[12]

Twitter, Facebook, and other microblogging services have become platforms for marketing and public relations,[14] with a sharp growth in the number of social-media marketers. The Sysomos study shows that this specific group of marketers on Twitter is much more active than the general user population, with 15% of marketers following over 2,000 people and only 0.29% of the Twitter public following more than 2,000 people.[12]

Microblogging has also become an important source of real-time news updates during socio-political revolutions and crisis situations, such as the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks or the 2009 Iran protests.[15][16] The short nature of updates allow users to post news items quickly, reaching an audience in seconds. Clay Shirky argues that those services have the potential to result in an information cascade, which prompts fencesitters to turn into activists.[17]

Microblogging has noticeably revolutionized the way information is consumed.[18] It has empowered citizens themselves to act as sensors or sources of information that could lead to consequences and influence, or even cause, media coverage. People share what they observe in their surroundings, information about events, and their opinions about topics from a wide range of fields. Moreover, these services store various metadata from these posts, such as location and time. Aggregated analysis of this data includes different dimensions like space, time, theme, sentiment, network structure etc., and gives researchers an opportunity to understand social perceptions of people in the context of certain events of interest.[19][20] Microblogging also promotes authorship. On the micro-blogging platform Tumblr, the reblogging feature links the post back to the original creator.

The findings of a study by Emily Pronin of Princeton University and Daniel Wegner of Harvard University may explain the rapid growth of microblogging. The study suggests a link between short bursts of activity and feelings of joy, power, and creativity.[21]

Issues

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Microblogging is not without issues, such as privacy, security, and integration.[22]

Privacy is arguably a major issue because users may broadcast sensitive personal information to anyone who views their public feed. An example would be Google's Buzz platform, which incited controversy in 2010 by automatically publicizing users' email contacts as "followers".[23] Google later amended those settings.

On centralized services, where all of the microblog's information flows through one point (such as servers operated by X (Twitter), privacy has been a concern in that user information has sometimes been exposed to governments and courts without the prior consent of the user who generated such supposedly private information, usually through subpoenas or court orders.[original research?] Examples can be found in Wikileaks related Twitter subpoenas,[24][25][26][27] as well as various other cases.[28][29][30][31]

Security concerns have been voiced within the business world since there is potential for sensitive work information to be publicized on microblogging sites such as Twitter.[32][33][failed verification] That includes information that may be subject to a superinjunction.[34]

Integration could be the hardest issue to overcome since someone can be argued that corporate culture must change to accommodate microblogging.[citation needed] An internet architecture called OStatus has been developed so that microblogging can occur seamlessly across multiple corporate platforms. This protocol has evolved into ActivityPub, on which the Mastodon federated platform has been based since version 1.6,[35] and on which more and more platforms making up the Fediverse are based. Users of these platforms are members of a specific instance running one of the software of the Fediverse, which can interoperate as a federated social network, allowing users on different nodes to interact with each other.

[edit]

Live blogging is a derivative of microblogging that generates a continuous feed on a specific web page.

Instant messaging and IRC display status but generally only one of a few choices such as available, off-line, away, busy. Away messages, which are displayed when the user is away, form a kind of micro-blogging.

In the Finger protocol, the .project and .plan files are sometimes used for status updates similar to microblogging.[36]

See also

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Articles

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Protocols

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Server software

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Services

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Defunct

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Past micro-blogging services, no longer active.

References

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  1. ^ a b Kaplan Andreas M.; Haenlein Michael (2011). "The early bird catches the news: Nine things you should know about micro-blogging". Business Horizons. Archived from the original on 2023-01-02. Retrieved 2023-01-02.
  2. ^ S. Lohmann; et al. (2012). "Visual Analysis of Microblog Content Using Time-Varying Co-occurrence Highlighting in Tag Clouds" (PDF). AVI 2012 Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-10-18. Retrieved 2012-05-30.
  3. ^ Reece, Manton. "Indie Microblogging". micro.blog. Manton Reece. Archived from the original on 2022-12-22. Retrieved 2023-01-01.
  4. ^ Aichner, T.; Jacob, F. (March 2015). "Measuring the Degree of Corporate Social Media Use". International Journal of Market Research. 57 (2): 257–275. doi:10.2501/IJMR-2015-018. S2CID 166531788.
  5. ^ Stop, For Blogging's Sake Archived 2012-12-28 at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ^ "Tumblelogs". kottke.org. 2005-10-19. Archived from the original on 2013-11-13. Retrieved 2013-11-27.
  7. ^ Reece, Manton. "What is Microblogging? In Indie Microblogging". Micro.blog. Manton Reece. Archived from the original on 2022-10-18. Retrieved 2023-01-01.
  8. ^ "Pownce website". Pownce.com. Archived from the original on 8 January 2013. Retrieved 2013-11-27.
  9. ^ Fielding, Sarah (31 May 2024). "Instagram makes its status update feature more interactive".
  10. ^ Pathak, Khamosh (29 August 2023). "How to Use WhatsApp Status: 11 Things You Need to Know".
  11. ^ "New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets". Harvard Business School. 2009-06-01. Archived from the original on 2022-01-29. Retrieved 2022-01-29.
  12. ^ a b c "Inside Twitter: An In-depth Look Inside the Twitter World". Sysomos. 2009-06-10. Archived from the original on 2019-04-10. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
  13. ^ "The More Followers You Have, The More You Tweet. Or Is It The Other Way Around?". TechCrunch. 2009-06-10. Archived from the original on 2010-06-20. Retrieved 2010-06-23.
  14. ^ Jin, Liyun (2009-06-21). "Businesses using Twitter, Facebook to market goods". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on 2009-06-24. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
  15. ^ "First Hand Accounts Of Terrorist Attacks In India On Twitter, Flickr". TechCrunch. 2008-11-26. Archived from the original on 2009-06-15. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
  16. ^ "Twitter on Iran: A Go-to Source or Almost Useless?". 2009-06-22. Archived from the original on 2011-04-03. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
  17. ^ Shirky, Clay. "The Net Advantage". Prospect Magazine. Archived from the original on 2014-11-04. Retrieved 2014-10-24.
  18. ^ Chen, Xing; Li, Lin; Xiong, Shili (2013). "The Media Feature Analysis of Microblog Topics". Database Systems for Advanced Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 7827. pp. 193–206. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-40270-8_16. ISBN 978-3-642-40269-2. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  19. ^ M. Nagarajan; et al. "Spatio-Temporal-Thematic Analysis of Citizen-Sensor Data — Challenges and Experiences". WISE 2009 Conference. Archived from the original on 2011-04-12. Retrieved 2010-12-27.
  20. ^ M. Auer; et al. (2014). "The Potential of Microblogs for the Study of Public Perceptions of Climate Change". WIREs Climate Change. 5 (3): 291–296. Bibcode:2014WIRCC...5..291A. doi:10.1002/wcc.273. S2CID 129809371.
  21. ^ "Could this be a factor in the allure of microblogs?". 2009-04-19. Archived from the original on 2012-07-19.
  22. ^ Dejin Zhao & Mary Beth Rosson (May 2009). "How and why people Twitter: The role that micro-blogging plays in informal communication at work". Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work. pp. 243–252. doi:10.1145/1531674.1531710. ISBN 9781605585000. S2CID 207172321.
  23. ^ "Google Buzz redesigned after privacy complaints". The Telegraph. London. February 15, 2010. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
  24. ^ Whittaker, Zack (8 January 2011). "US Subpoenas Wikileaks Tweets, and Why This Could Affect You". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 12 January 2011. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  25. ^ Sonne, Paul (10 January 2011). "U.S. Asks Twitter for WikiLeaks Data". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 14 September 2015. Retrieved 10 January 2011.
  26. ^ Greenwald, Glenn. "DOJ Subpoenas Twitter Records of Several WikiLeaks Volunteers". Salon. Archived from the original on 12 January 2011. Retrieved 10 January 2011.
  27. ^ Beaumont, Peter (8 January 2011). "WikiLeaks Demands Google and Facebook Unseal US Subpoenas". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2011.
  28. ^ Remizowski, Leigh. "NYPD to subpoena Twitter over theater threat". New York. CNN. Archived from the original on January 26, 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  29. ^ Holland, Adam (January 24, 2013). "French Court Orders Twitter to Disclose User Identities". Chilling Effects. Archived from the original on April 4, 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  30. ^ "Twitter resists US court's demand for Occupy tweets". May 9, 2012. Archived from the original on October 9, 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  31. ^ Jackson, Patrick (January 24, 2013). "French court orders Twitter to reveal racists' details". Archived from the original on January 27, 2013. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
  32. ^ Emma Barnett (March 20, 2010). "Have business networking sites finally come of age?". The Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
  33. ^ "A world of connections". The Economist. Jan 28, 2010. Archived from the original on March 25, 2010. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
  34. ^ "Twitter outings undermine "super injunctions"". Reuters. 2011-05-09. Archived from the original on 2019-08-15. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  35. ^ "ActivityPub IndieWeb". indieweb.org. Archived from the original on 10 March 2021. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  36. ^ "Show HN: Twtxt – Decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers". 2016-02-06. Archived from the original on 2016-06-24. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
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