Looks like the online world is moving too fast for me to try and catch up. Given I’m not an early adopter (unless its a Google service) of most apps/services, things get out of hand far too often.
Have you heard of ___? Have you heard of ____?
Isn’t ____ fabulous?
____ can now be accessed via mobile phones in India !
Finally I could upload videos directly from my mobile to ____ .
So ____ now has an auto push option on my phone, so I don’t have to keep refreshing anymore.
My girlfriend leaked my naked pictures on ____ yesterday ! …
…are few of the conversations with my friends in the last week, where I felt like I was letting them down for not having tried whatever the ____ was in that case.
That brings me to the topic of the hour. Micro Blogging. It has various other very cool sounding names including stream of consciousness and, online presence. In the last 2-3 days I’ve tried and tested a few of these services and am carefully considering my options. Here they are:
1. Jaiku – Nice and simple. No fuss. Mobile, IM access, Embed’able. Also, acquired by Google. ( hmmmm… )
2. Twitter – Most popular in this genre of web services. ( also one of the first? ). Getting cluttered. Reader base very high. I also have a lot of friends here. ( Disadvantage for me is that someone has already taken twitter.com/sasidhar. sigh! )
3. Tumblr – Looks promising. Very web 2.0 ( wanna debate what IS web2.0? 
). Like Jaiku, gives subdomains and not subdirectories like Twitter. Which I like. Mobile, IM, bookmarklet for easy submission, RSS etc. are available. Tumblr also has a nice feature of running it directly on a custom domain. I could have i.sasidhar.org/ running my micro blog. Tempting.
4. Gelato cms – Standalone installable microblogging cms. (Haven’t tried it yet but) looks good, and has some neat reviews. Very practical. My kinda thing. I wouldn’t have a existing network to connect to, but that may end up being a plus.
5. Tumblelog – Can run a wordpress install, and install this new theme that is customized for micro blogging. I fall in love with wordpress everytime I hear of something like this.
Having created this list, I think its not fair to compare these services. They all offer different things, each is great on its own. Now, all I have to figure is what I want my need is…….
Comments 6
My girlfriend leaked my naked pictures on ____ yesterday ! …
LOL! Real sport, lives to tell the tale of his shame shame puppy shame!
Posted 26 Feb 2008 at 1:48 am ¶Yeh, microblogging seems to be where it’s at these days, and hey, as lowly serfs, all we can do is follow the stream, right? (:
I rolled with tumblr for a while, but didn’t like that it wasn’t living in my database (I’m a pro data portability kinda guy), so I tried Gelato instead, which is nice, definitely, but I was too thickheaded to theme it, and change stuff around myself.
In the end I went with Chyrp, whose theming engine is pretty easy to get your head around, and the modularity of it is great. Lots of people has already contributed some great ‘feathers’ and ‘modules’. And furthermore, it all sits on your own domain, in your own database, and it’s all pretty sweet. It has the tumblr-feel to it, with bookmarklets that prefills elements according to the page you invoked it from.
Check it out, I’m sure it will be worthy as a sixth element on your list.
Posted 26 Feb 2008 at 2:36 am ¶Nice list Sasi, thanks. Jonas, does this mean you’re not using twitter anymore?
Posted 26 Feb 2008 at 1:34 pm ¶@max: hey, thats a conversation I had with a friend !
@Jonas: Thanks for the suggestion. Will take Chryp for a spin sometime. Like you said, I’m a pro data guy too… Looks like its going to be either Gelato or Chyrp.
Posted 26 Feb 2008 at 2:08 pm ¶Oh, I’m still on twitter, or should I say still almost not on twitter, not as active as some other microbloggers around (:
Posted 26 Feb 2008 at 2:51 pm ¶You forgot Pownce… having a custom install kinda defeats teh purpose of having a microblog in the first place? doesnt it? You microblog so that there are no hassles of tweaking and ftp and themes and plugins, and what not that goes with WordPress.
Dont get me wrong, I love WP and the customization options, but thats for a full blown blog. Microblogging is abt simply IMing / SMSing something… easily and instantly.
All said and done, I am still going to try out Gelato and Chyrp
Posted 26 Mar 2008 at 8:43 pm ¶Post a Comment