Blogs: Micro-Blogs

Twitter

• Twitter is a micro-blogging service which was inspired by group SMS texting, the idea would save money, and send a post to all contacts with the same 140 character limit of an SMS message.
• As the user types into the post box, an algorithm counts down the number of characters available, if the user goes over 140, the system shows how many characters the user must delete. This system is useful as it allows the user to easily work out which words to remove, however this limits the capacity of what the user can post, therefore making it difficult to fully explain what you want to post.

The algorithm showing the number of characters that need to be removed.

• Twitter allows users to "follow" people, this means that you will be alerted everytime that person creates a new post. Many celebrities have twitter, this means the press can be very good at using posts as gossip and potential headlines. There have been many incidents where celebrities have wrote "inappropriate" posts on twitter, this has been instantly reported by the media. The existance of the press, creates problems with twitter, and sometimes they can even read public tweets, which most people see as a breach of privacy. However, on the other hand, users can create special posts in which they can choose which of their "followers" can see the post, allowing more privacy between users.
• If privacy is the main concern for a user, then they direct message users, this is affectively a "post" which only ONE follower can see, the 140 character rule still applies. Once again, the problem with this is that users cannot fit what they want to say easily into 140 characters.

• Twitter has recently been in a controversial privacy issue where a website (http://pleaserobme.com/) worked out which twitter users weren't at home using keywords and GPS co-ordinates. Many people were very concerned and the owner of the site now doesn't provide the information. The information can still be found, and twitter need to fix the privacy issue urgently.

The controversial "Please Rob Me" website.

Blogger or Twitter?

• The micro-blogging sensation is popular and is a good way to share small moments with friends and celebrities, however it is not very good for sharing long detailed blogs and there also isn't a feature available to "comment" instead the reply "@user", which can take up many character spaces in the post. Twitter is better for social use rather than work/school.
• Blogger has much more features and "gadgets" and users can "follow" eachother in the same way as twitter, you also have the option to write lengthier posts. On the other hand it is much less popular, and is used more for professional bloggers than celebrities. If I were to choose between them, I would pick Blogger because I don't find it easy to create a post that makes grammatical sense in under 140 characters, for me this is the justification of using Blogger instead of Twitter.