The Inquisitr » microblogging

Microbitching: blogging complaints in 300 characters or less

Kim LaCapria — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:45:31 +0000

The internet has another place for you to vent your grievances, if Facebook, Twitter or FML are sick of listening to you.

BossBitching.com has re-launched as The Bitching Network, with separate channels for whining about work, life or “tabloid”- a category to complain about the annoying antics of celebrities. This particular outlet can come in handy to those who have to put on a cheerful, optimistic or just generally professional face for places like Facebook or Twitter. And if your best friend or boss is your Facebook friend or Twitter follower, you can tell the world how they’re getting on your tits. Anonymously, of course.

What’s the point, you may ask? The Signals vs. Noise blog discussed the benefits of bitching on the internet:

It sucks. It blows. It’s useless. It’s too expensive. It feels too cheap. It doesn’t do enough. It’s too complex. They don’t care.

Bitching is such a succinct form of expression. It doesn’t require or usually entail deep analysis. It’s the easiest way to write something “interesting”. Readers flock to controversy, dissent, and drama. The words of bitching are short and carry plenty of punch for that drama.

Like bitching in real life, it’s much more fun to give than receive, but you can interact by voting “agree,” “disagree” or “stop complaining.” And in and of itself, bitching about some stranger’s random internet whining might be satisfying, too. Who doesn’t like telling a stranger to STFU?

Shout Em – create your own Twitter-like universe

Steven Hodson — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:42:41 +0000

I don’t normally do product or services reviews because truthfully I stink at them but when I got passed the release from Shout’em I thought it was be interesting enough to take a look at and share my thoughts on it.

What is Shout’em?

The simplest explanation would be – take a heaping helping of Twitter and mix with a dash of Ning – mix together and voila - Shout’em.

With Shout’em you can create your own private microblogging universe; or as many as you like. Members can customize their networks as far as the look as well as how it functions. There are options to allow file sharing and photo sharing among others. As well you can select whether you want any of your created networks to be private or public.

Setting up your Shout’Em microblogs

The process of setting up a microblogging network on Shout’em is actually quite simple and painless. It is a three step process but you can fine tune the settings for individual networks later on from within each network.

The first step of course is the standard naming one where you enter in the name for you new Shout’Em microblogging network along with a tagline for it.

The next step is the start of the personalization of your new network where you can select the theme; or ’skin’ as Shout’em calls the available styles. There are quite a number of really nice looking ones which is nice to see. Usually this type of option when made available is pretty limited in the beginning but Shout’em has made sure you have a nice selection of themes to choose from on day one.

The third step is where you can select the features you want available on your network. This includes whether or not this is a public or private network. As well you can add features that not even Twitter has yet, such as file sharing. I will admit this is one area of the service that I think could be a real advantage even though I can also see ways in which it could be misused.

Once you’ve finished with the third setup page you are launched into your new microblog where you can sign in and finished setting up things like your profile and make any changes to the overall settings for your microblog.

Thoughts on Shout’Em

To be honest I’m not sure on the long term viability of services like Shout’Em. Sure it’s neat to be able to setup your own Twitter-like universe but really for what reason. I can however see how such a services could be really useful for in-house project teams or for corporate use in general. With the ability to make the microblog private as well as having file and photo sharing Shout’Em could find a nice niche market in the business world. As for the general surfing public – well I’m not so sure about that.

The official launch of Shout’Em will be at this year’s LeWeb in France so until then I believe setting up new microblogging networks on Shout’Em is by invitation only. If you want to give it a try for your self head on over to the Shout’em and use the invite code of doneright

In the meantime you can check out the Inquisitr microblog I set up (http://inquisitr.shoutem.com) – I’ll make sure to hang out there for a while.

Oh No! Everything Is Dead Let’s Microblog About It

Steven Hodson — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:48:44 +0000

The other day I wrote post here about how Paul Boutin declared that blogging was oh so 2004 and was dying an ignoble death. Now we are being told that the Grey Lady herself might just be on life support and may not see the end of the recession (or is depression the cool word now?).

In and amongst this terrible news about the death and destruction of newspapers along with its heir apparent blogging being handed its own tombstone we have a rumor being circulated by the king of Silicon Valley rumors – Valleywag. According to them TechCrunch and its illustrious leader Michael Arrington, they are very quickly becoming a has-been - a nice way to say that the TechCrunch empire is riding the same boat as the Grey Lady.

All though this despair and dysfunction though we are being offered a glimmering of hope that not all is lost in the ego lifestreaming world because we are all going to be rescued from individuality and obscurity by microblogging. Yes folks things like Twitter, FriendFeed and any of the other sundry copycats are coming to our rescue. Instead of being crushed by the obligation of of writing intelligent and interesting posts we are all going to be able to inflict our own brand of 140 character verbal diarrhea upon millions of people as they stand on street corners and soup kitchen lineups holding their last vestige of cool technology in their hand – the mobile phone – you know – that thing that killed off the desktop computer.

Oh wait .. it didn’t kill it off after all and those soup kitchen lineups – well the chances are that anyone in the tech world; especially the VCs funding this hot air balloon called Web 2.0, won’t even see the inside of a food bank let alone stand in a soup kitchen lineup. Those that do probably couldn’t careless about 140 characters flying through the air as they are just hoping that the Grey Lady survives the winter because all that paper makes for great blankets against the cold.

As for microblogging becoming the newest snitz I hope it does. I hope that microblogging becomes so hot that everyone who thinks they are going to make their fortune as a hot shot blogger with a pageful of ads becomes disillusioned and heads off to new territories. This way those of us who believe that the new media can be a valued and trusted heir to heritage media; or at least to be able to work together on an equal footing, can get on with the quiet revolution of journalism.

Just as vinyl never really went away neither will print. Just as television was going to destroy radio they say the same about microblogging destroying blogging which is suppose to kill off what is now being called heritage media. Well television and radio are still here – side by side. Sure they may have changed in some fashion or another, that is to be expected. The same will happen with this thing we are calling new media. It to will find a way to blend with the old and make something new and better.

But it won’t be microblogging.

Is Kwippy yet another microblogging service?

Duncan Riley — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:07:57 +0000

OK, so the headline is a little sarcastic, but microblogging services are quickly turning into fast food outlets, so many to choose from, so little with any substantial benefits over the others. Kwippy is another microblogging service that has launched into closed beta, and Steve Hodson was kind enough to invite me in (also read his review here).

The qualitative differences: Kwippy, according to the folks behind it, is “a micro/nanoblogging webapp + IM status logger + social network.” The main focus of Kwippy is based on links in to instant messaging platforms, with support for Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. Like Twitter, the service consists of updates (called rather cleverly Kwip) and can be made from an IM platform, or can be fed back to it.

Kwippy does however lack a lot of features users have come to expect in microblogging platforms. There’s no character limit, but there’s no mobile version or support for @ (although you can reply to messages). There’s no audio, video or picture support such as with Utterz, nor is there any new about the layout, which is straight out of the Twitter play book.

Kwippy claims the service will scale because they’ve built in using Python, Django, Memcashed and Linux (note, their list), and yet I see the term MySQL and I automatically think database, content management, and perhaps some of the same problems Twitter is facing. Smart people keep telling me that treating services like this as content management platforms is the inherent problem before you even start, but I’ll leave that debate to others.

I avoid IM like the plague, and although I have a Google Talk account via proxy through a gmail address, I rarely touch it. I also don’t have an active Yahoo Messenger account, so the links in to these services delivers zero appeal to me. However IM is still immensely popular among younger internet users, and anything that hooks into these services is bound to at least have half a chance of finding an audience. I’m going to give it a shot for a while, mostly because Steve Hodson told me I should, and see how it goes. One day, one of these services is going to be the magic Twitter replacement/ killer, and I’ll keep on trying to find the one that is. The quest for the holy grail of microblogging continues.

You can follow me on Kwippy here, and I also have 25 invites in for those who want them. I need your email address though to send them, so if you can work out a way to give me your address, feel free to do so. Also everyone who gets in gets 25 invites, so there will be lots of sharing going on as well I’d think.