Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com - Digital Media Engineering ]

12/03/08 Microblogging - Challenges of the Mainstream

SINGAPORE - Always Connected? Online through most of your work-day? Information addict? No wonder you think microblogging is brilliant. You can remain in-touch with what everyone is doing all the time in real-time.

But does Twitter lose its value if a majority of your inner circle of contacts are not connected all-day?

Based in Asia at present, my ‘circle’ comes online at around 4pm here (8am GMT). I am on twitter most of their work-day, but I miss the evening session as I am asleep. In the morning I see what has happened overnight, by which time the data has lost its entire value.

Unlike one-one, the value in many-many is real-time conversation that will happen with or without you. The longer a message waits to be read by you, the faster it loses value. By the next morning it has none.

This will be a big challenge to main-streaming microblogging.

(Image Credit: A giant monitor lizard crawls back into the water beside our office. Size scaled against a 500ml beer can. Last week by author.)

Tags: asia, challenge, connected, mainstream, singapore

6 Comments

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12/03/08 Anton Mannering

Have to disagree with you on that. It’s only a problem for Twitter. I know it’s bombing right now but Jaikus threaded conversations handle this easily

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12/03/08 Robin Blandford

I think when it’s in the form of a conversation (rather than statements) and the conversation happens without you - there is little point in your replying late.

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13/03/08 gregory

i love the idea of twitter, love to watch the (mostly inane) comments pop up on the world map at twittervision, but here in india it seems almost useless, the infrastructure is just not developed enough, so i am like a face pressed up to the window, watching the world inside/outside, when i talk about it

that said, i grabbed a nokia e51 here, and cannot wait to be a part of the electronic (nether?)world in singapore and thailand next month. i want to test all the possibilities for a montrh, just so i can learn what the big boys are doing

that also said, what sim card can a tourist get? i think star hub is available, what about singtel? and what about the same card in bangkok? any advice, based on your learning curve?

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13/03/08 gregory

by the way, i love the design of this blog, the little color splashes behind the links, the color choices, it is sweet … what csm? or your own? way cool

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13/03/08 gregory

cms

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14/03/08 Robin Blandford

Thanks Gregory - it’s a template I did myself for Wordpress.

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