Microblogging

This summer, I have become fascinated with microblogging. Microblogging is a way to share information ("What am I doing?" in less than 140 characters) with people in my network. From what I've read, Microblogging is part of a new trend called "lifestreaming" or "lifecasting."

I started experimenting with microblogging last year on MySpace's "status update" and expanded this summer to Twitter, Facebook, and, most recently, Plurk. It was too time consuming for me to update each site separately, so I started using Ping.fm , which I learned about on Twitter, to post simultaneouly to these sites. Last week, I learned how to search for "Tweets" that I'm interested in using Summize. I haven't used this yet, but with Twitter 100, users are supposed to be able to see their followers at a glance. I have more followers on Twitter than Plurk, which is relatively new, but the downside of Twitter has been the "downtime." I've also had to block several self-promoters who have thousands of followers.

The appeal to microblogging wasn't exactly immediate for me since I didn't find an educational purpose to it at first. However, once I started following communication from other technology educators, I began to learn of great tools and resources that will be invaluable for me as a new campus technology specialist this year.

Plurk video from YouTube:

Twitter in Plain English video:

Other microblogging sites that I've heard about but haven't signed up for yet include, Pownce, Jaiku (who is supposed to be joining Google), and identi.ca. I'm sure there are many other sites like this, and I'm curious which microblogging sites other technology specialists prefer for this type of communication??