Tech Trends: Platforms

8/14/2019 Tech Trends: Platforms

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/tech-trends-platforms 1/11

Webbmedia Knowledge Base: Tech Trends Report on New Blogging Platforms

© 2010 Webbmedia Group, LLC | http://www.webbmediagroup.com | Updated Jan. 1, 2010

TECH TRENDS: PLATFOR

New Blogging PlatformsMicroblogging, real-time short messaging and more.

By Jennifer Ward

http://www.webbmediagroup.com/







Executive Summary:

In the contemporary digital-media landscape, blogs are asubiquitous as newspapers and magazines. But new ways ofblogging – and the new platforms on which to do it – areemerging every day. The short, real-time, mini-web updatesmade popular by Facebook and Twitter have been collectivelytermed “microblogging.” The services that specialize in them arestarting to encroach on territory formerly occupied by giants likeBlogger, Typepad, and Wordpress.

Significance:

The latest blogging platforms offer a simply way to shareinformation in a quick and concise manner. From a Facebookstatus to a shared sound bite, a microblog is like passing a singlenote to all your friends and associates at the same time. Themost eponymous among the microblogs is, of course, Twitter.The blue bird of instant updates, hot links, and newsworthy noteshas taken the Internet to new levels, and in fact has helpeddefine the form as it evolves. Other services allow users to senda text message or email to publish what looks like a sophisticatedblog entry, and audiences donʼt always know the difference.

Because new blogging platforms are usually free and alwayseasy to use, millions of new content streams enter the web everyday. For publishers, this means increased competition. Brandmanagers will notice a decentralized flow of information, makingit much more difficult to control messaging. And for the everydayuser, blogging just became much more accessible.

Key Definitions

Microblogging is a new form multimedia blogging thatenables users to send short teupdates as well as images,video and other content to areal-time service. Content isautomatically displayed andsyndicated throughout multiplenetworks.

A tumblelog is a collection oflinks and short text messages

arranged in reversechronological order.

Why New Blogging Platforms Matter Now: • Twitter and other real-time

microblogging toolsdramatically changed theproducts and strategies ofnearly every major Internetcompany between 2008-201

• New platforms are lightweigheasy to use and most oftenfree. A non-technical personcan easily establish a websitand audience now with littleeffort or digital know-how.

• The new blogging platformsmore easily integrate with avariety of contentmanagement systems,previously a challenge for

many content-driven website






Chronology of the Blog In 1997, computer programmer Jorn Barger first used the term “weblog” to refer to a listof collected links on his website. It wasnʼt long before people started to use it as a verb.That same year, Pyra Labs, a small company founded by Twitterʼs Evan Williams,launched a publishing tool called Blogger.1 Soon anyone with a computer and anInternet connection was blogging: cooks, athletes, pundits, soccer moms and celebritiesalike.

Moveable Type (http://www.movabletype.com) and its successor TypePad launchedbetween 2001 and 2003, and then Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org) introduced its

open-source model. According to a study2 by Royal Pingdom earlier this year,Wordpress remains the most popular choice among bloggers.

Then things started to change: Facebook gained momentum. Twitter rose fromobscurity. The Internet became more and more accessible, and bloggers were givenmore tools to cast their content out to broader audiences. Status updates and tweetswere easier to create and publish than long posts. Years before it became mainstream,Jason Kottke (of Kottke.org) described the trend as simply “cross-blog chatter, thebarest whiff of a finished published work…the ʻstuffʼ that you run across every day onthe web.”3

The early adapters were, of course, the ones already schooled in digital sharing.According to a recent Technorati poll4, only 14% of the general population used Twittershortly after it launched, while 73% of bloggers were early adopters.



1 Blogger was later acquired by Google.

2 http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/01/15/the-blog-platforms-of-choice-among-the-top-100-blogs/.

3 http://www.kottke.org/05/10/tumblelogs.

4 http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and.

http://www.wordpress.org/

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/

http://www.kottke.org/05/10/tumblelogs

http://www.kottke.org/05/10/tumblelogs

http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/01/15/the-blog-platforms-of-choice-among-the-top-100-blogs/

http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/01/15/the-blog-platforms-of-choice-among-the-top-100-blogs/





http://www.movabletype.com/

http://www.movabletype.com/



Case Study

So, whatʼs the difference between blogs and these newer blog-like platforms? Itʼs aquestion every dyed-in-the-wool blogger (or blog reader) will at some point ask. Theanswer is, there are special uses for all platforms.

Take Lisa Barnes, for example, an advertising associate in upstate New York. She blogson Blogger, tweets on Twitter, and has profiles on both Facebook and LinkedIn. On herblog “The Spinster Chronicles,” Barnes writes about being a modern unmarried woman.

Her posts are lengthy – the scrolling feature befits her blog. But her prose rings withpersonal anecdotes and observations from everyday life.

Barnes is also an avid microblogger. Whenever thereʼs a new post up on her blog, sheʼllsend a note out to her followers and friends via Twitter. This is automatically posted onher Facebook profile as well, because Barnes has synchronized the two services. Anotice will also go up on her Facebook page, where fans of her popular spinningclasses at the local gym can get inspired by her musings.

And then there are posts unrelated to her blog. Short and sweet, Barnes uses theseshort messages to share things not worth a 500-word blog post: a new recipe she found

or a YouTube video thatʼs made her laugh. Facebook is even more personal, with statusupdates on what she had for lunch or why she can ʼt wait for the weekend.

What Barnes has done is to create a comprehensive digital brand for herself.Consumers find a variety of content published in many ways. While she may postlengthy blog entries, Barnes is also using lots of services to send pictures, links andvideos. None of her content stands alone. Rather, her brand is a nucleus, reachingarms into as many of her networks and applications as she will allow. By casting a widernet, Barnes gains greater exposure for her writing, and is more connected to and activewithin her community.







Making the Change

A more well-known and vocal spokesperson for this type of personal branding is SteveRubel, Senior Vice President and Director of Insights for Edelman Digital. He oftenrefers to his collected posts as “lifestreaming.”

Rubel made waves in social media and marketing this year when he moved his popularblog “Micro Persuasion” to the Steve Rubel Lifestream (http://www.steverubel.com) onthe Posterous platform. Posterous (http://posterous.com) is a very lightweight, simple

blogging platform that enables users to create rich media posts using nothing but email.Full entries can even be created on the fly using the average data-enabled mobilephone.

Call it “lifestreaming” or “microblogging.” Either way, services like Posterous havesignificantly changed the blogging ecosystem.

How Does Microblogging Work?

There are about as many lifestreaming providers as there are things to share. In

addition to the ones already mentioned, Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com) is anotherhighly-regarded light-blogging platform.

The roster is accumulating sites whose names sound like Saturday morning cartoons:Jaiku, Yammer, MySay, Hictu, Moodmill, Frazr, Emotionr, Glogger, and Neatorama, toname a few. (See the end of this report for a full list of links and resources.)

Some of these new platforms only publish running lists of how users are feeling on anygiven day, whereas others are places to share what professionals are working on (as isthe case with LinkedIn and the recently-previewed Chatter). Many of them havehorizontal integration, which is to say, you can update your LinkedIn status using a plug-

in for Twitter.



http://posterous.com/

http://www.steverubel.com/



http://www.tumblr.com/








One of the most effective aspects of microblogging is that many of its providers havemoved towards a cross-platform, open system. This means that the latest micro-platforms can now talk to each other. Microblogs are in constant conversation. Theydonʼt stand alone like blog posts do.

As will any innovation, however, the process is still clunky and can be tedious andfrustrating. For example, when I tried to use my Twitter manager, Hootsuite(http://www.hootsuite.com) to update my Facebook page, I had to set up an accountwith yet another provider called Ping.fm. Since I administer two Facebook pages andtwo Twitter accounts, the process is still not streamlined as much as I would expect.Still, these platforms are in a state of constant evolution: the advent of Twitter lists(http://www.twitter.com/lists ) is another sign that solutions are near.

Differences Between Providers

Ask Rubel his thoughts on the usability of sites like Posterous, and youʼll get a clearanswer. He says he “fell in love” with its flexibility, was “enchanted” by its portability andhow it handles non-text formats, and that it “rekindled” his creative side5.

And then there are microblogging sites that specialize in media other than text, such asAudioBoo, a service launched in the spring of 2009. AudioBoo supports audio fileuploads of up to five minutes long. Users have their own channels and can create audiologs, tagged and categorized, using nothing but a mobile phone. Each “boo,” or audiopost, includes an area for text and a photo, and the service automatically geo-codeseach recording with an interactive map. Communicate Magazine in the UK was one ofthe first online publications to integrate the AudioBoo widget into their site. In the simple,cleanly designed player, visitors to the site can listen to short quotes from the people themagazine has interviewed. But this tool can easily be used for event-based reporting, tocover a brand at a conference or any kind of public event.



5 http://technorati.com/blogging/article/steve-rubel-interview-sotb-2009.

http://www.twitter.com/lists

http://www.hootsuite.com/

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/steve-rubel-interview-sotb-2009

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/steve-rubel-interview-sotb-2009









Platform Benefits One of the chief benefits for the modern microblogger is having a central place to gatherup fragments. For those not interested in anything beyond Facebook, streamlining is auseless concept as the network does it all for them. But when people start to experimentwith other networks such as Twitter and Flickr, suddenly issues of overlap start to creepin: Does this link belong on Facebook or Twitter? Who do I want to see and benefit fromthis message? Services like Posterous are trying to be a hub for interacting with multiplenetworks in this manner.

Any person or business with a web site knows the benefit of driving traffic where theywant it. By tweeting out reminders and updating Facebook pages, proprietors can help

guide their fans, whether - and this is important - they use Facebook or Twitter.Microblogging is like a gentle nudge: “Hey, have you seen this great new product?” or“Hereʼs some coverage weʼre really excited about sharing.” People may never visit yoursite daily, but if youʼre microblogging efficiently, you will start to build a stickiercommunity, one that recognizes your brand outside of its usual sphere of influence.

Another obvious benefit is that via microblogging, users have the ability to urge theirfriends and followers to also look at your content. Publish a great article or a compellingvideo, and its popularity could grow organically if your microblogs strategy is correctly inplace.

Microblogging can also be an important asset to corporate culture. In a recent CIO.comarticle, Kristin Burnham tells the story of three companies that have integratedmicroblogging into their employeesʼ workflow. The results have ranged from increasedcommunication and collaboration among workers, to greater transparency andunderstanding among company hierarchies. She concludes by offering some tips onhow to successfully implement microblogging into the workplace.6

As information and conversation become more accessible (and frenetic), how canadding to the noise be beneficial to people and businesses interested in spreading amessage? The answer lies in efficiency: the more streamlined and simple ourinteractions with our digital audience are, the more likely it is that our product or point of

view will be heard, seen and repeated to others.



6 http://www.cio.com/article/509425/Twitter_Alternatives_That_Are_All_Business.

http://www.cio.com/article/509425/Twitter_Alternatives_That_Are_All_Business

http://www.cio.com/article/509425/Twitter_Alternatives_That_Are_All_Business





Possible Drawbacks

In the same vein, it is not recommended to simply sign up for every new bloggingplatform and assault your collective audience with vast amounts of content. Knowingyour audience is the first step towards creating a meaningful digital environment for yourreaders or customers. What networks are they most likely to use? Where is theconversation about your brand already taking place? Does your company haveestablished communities online? Are those in your communities already activemicrobloggers themselves? If they are, it wonʼt be difficult to integrate your services intotheir daily workflow. Rubel calls lifestreaming the “ideal front end for the activepublisher,” but whether itʼs the ideal stream for the average media consumer is anotherquestion. Tweeting 15 links to our product every day might make us feel like productivecommunicators, but how is it benefiting others? Worse, is a constant flow of informationalienating our most valuable customers?

Additionally, there are some security concerns about services like Posterous. In thesummer of 2009, there were a few attacks on both Facebook and Twitter, whichrendered both services (and many of the individual accounts) While third parties do offerservices to back up microblog content, no service or tool is failsafe. Still, we expect themost popular services to offer solutions for securely archiving content in the near-future.

The Future of Microblogging

The world of digital publishing is exploding at an incredible rate, thanks to the proclivityof microblogging to help us log more stuff, more often. Less is needed to produce andshare more. While there is more information, entertainment, and opinion available to usthan ever before, the long-term effects are of course still a mystery.

Privacy is one concern. As information is stored in multiple places – when itʼs spread outamong networks – it can be harder to control. This has ramifications in private and inpublic. Take news organizations as an example. In December 2009, a Florida womanwas chastised for tweeting about her sonʼs death, and USA Today grappled with how tocover the story.7 Earlier, a reporter at the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News postedreal-time updates of a 3-year-oldʼs funeral service and endured harsh criticism of anentire community.8



7 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2009-12-18-twitter-mom_N.htm.

8 http://coloradoindependent.com/7966/rocky-publisher-responds-to-funeral-liveblog-outrage.

http://coloradoindependent.com/7966/rocky-publisher-responds-to-funeral-liveblog-outrage

http://coloradoindependent.com/7966/rocky-publisher-responds-to-funeral-liveblog-outrage

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2009-12-18-twitter-mom_N.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2009-12-18-twitter-mom_N.htm





More examples of microbloggingʼs future impact include how the Freedom ofInformation Act and the publicʼs right to know in America will eventually be interpreted.Elsewhere, censorship has already been contested.

The governmental ban of Twitter and Facebook during 2009 elections in Iranemphasized the two platforms as providing legitimate – and often powerful –information. In June 2009, on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests,the Chinese government deemed Flickr and Twitter dangerous enough to censor. Theworry? Online debate and organized observation of the 1989 events. In somecountries, status updates and tweets are used to tell stories of individual preferences,experiences, and relationships. But as some world powers know, microblogging extendsinto political and national life as well.

For markers and brand managers will need to closely monitor - and at times, control -conversations about their products, the ecosystem has become incredibly sophisticated.Without a strategy in place, one wrong turn can lead to a product launch disaster - andworse, a public play-by-play of a companyʼs behavior during the process.







New Platform Resources and Betas

Posterous - http://www.posterous.com

Tumblr - http://www.tumblr.com

Twitter - http://www.twitter.com

AudioBoo - http://www.audioboo.fm

Jaiku - http://www.jaiku.com

Yammer - http://www.yammer.com

Hictu - http://www.hictu.com

Moodmill - http://www.moodmill.com

Frazr - http://www.frazr.com

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com

Emotionr - http://www.emotionr.com

Dipity - http://www.dipity.com

Neatorama - http://www.neatorama.com





http://www.neatorama.com/

http://www.neatorama.com/

http://www.dipity.com/

http://www.dipity.com/

http://www.emotionr.com/

http://www.emotionr.com/

http://www.flickr.com/

http://www.flickr.com/

http://www.frazr.com/

http://www.frazr.com/

http://www.moodmill.com/

http://www.moodmill.com/

http://www.hictu.com/

http://www.hictu.com/

http://www.yammer.com/

http://www.yammer.com/

http://www.jaiku.com/

http://www.jaiku.com/

http://www.audioboo.fm/

http://www.audioboo.fm/

http://www.twitter.com/

http://www.twitter.com/



http://www.posterous.com/

http://www.posterous.com/



About the Author Jennifer Ward is a Research Intern at Webbmedia Group. She is a graduate of

journalism from the Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of PublicCommunications. She has recently served as a fellow with the Carnegie and KnightInitiative for the Future of Journalism, where she researched and reported on youth andtechnology.

About Webbmedia Group Webbmedia Group is an international digital strategy consultancy that offers mobile,platform, social and emerging tech/ media strategic services and workshops to Fortune500 companies, media organizations, mid-sized businesses, governments anduniversities worldwide.

Webbmedia Group provides insider access and tech insights to our client base. Ourdetailed analysis, tech trend reports and quarterly tech wrap-ups help our clients learnabout new industries and gain better expertise in those they already know.

For more information or to inquire about our services, please see http:// www.webbmediagroup.com or call our office: (267) 342-4300.









Date post:	30-May-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	webbmedia-group
View:	216 times
Download:	0 times

Tech Trends: Platforms

Documents