Microblogging News & Articles

When Palm’s Pre phone was finally unveiled at January’s Consumer Electronic Association’s (CEA) bash earlier this year, everyone knew it was going to create a stir.

With it, Palm introduced some very cool hardware and a new operating system that looks like it will be Palm's platform for mobile devices for the foreseeable future: webOS.

Now, with the phone on general release, Alex King of Crowd Favorite, a prodigious developer of WordPress (news, site) plug-ins, has released a new edition of his WordPress Mobile Edition plug-in that will allow Pre users with WordPress blogs to update and edit the blogs using Pre.

Apart from the added support for the webOS operating system -- a Linux-based platform which leverages web standards for development – there are also a couple of other updates.

For one, it fixes a CSS bug that was referencing a non-existent image. For another it includes a new version of Carrington Mobile, the content management system theme framework for WordPress. This also includes updated README files and version 2.3 of the core Carrington framework.

If you have a Pre and a WordPress blog you can download the plug-in from Alex King’s WordPress plug-ins page.

In the competitive landscape of web content management, having the latest features can be a major advantage, so kudos to Jadu (news, site) for being the first to claim an integrated Twitter module in its Web CMS.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• W3C Creates Social Web Incubator Group
• Twitter Violates Privacy By Revealing User Info
• Flutter: The New Twitter
• Monitor Conversation With ConvoTrack

Swish around in your head the idea of using Open Source micro-blogging for social graphing. Think: Measuring how often one person converses with another. Apply the concept to a service as popular as Twitter and it’s a bit over-the-top, but apply it to a company’s private network and suddenly you’ve got the ability to track your most productive employees.

Spearheading what could possibly be a vehicle to the future of Business Intelligence is the newest offering from Canadian microblogging server Laconica—the most popular Open Source alternative to Twitter. 

Socialtext, a provider of social networking and collaboration software, has introduced a microblogging platform into their system. Socialtext Signals are Yammer-Twitter-like messages that allow co-workers and colleagues to stay up-to-date on the going-ons.

One of the cooler startups announced at this year’s Mobile World Conference was a little Dutch creation called Zcapes.

Brought to you by a trio of mobile service architects, the new microblogging platform attempts to “augment reality” by accomplishing a specific set of goals: answering what is arguably the most popular question on the Web in a new and different way, filling gaps commonly left by search engines, and by becoming a viable mobile solution for real-time activity.

As lifestreaming continues to grow in popularity, so do the ways in which it’s presented. Introducing one of the first players to take the sentimental route: thisMoment.

Still in its beta testing phase, thisMoment isn’t marketed as a lifestream, a micro-blogging service or a social network, even though it could easily be used for any of those things. No, thisMoment is presented as something a little closer to the heart. Specifically, “A place for saving and sharing the moments of your life.” 

Many folks have claimed that 2009 will see the rise of Enterprise 2.0. That is, through the application of social media technologies (a.k.a web 2.0), we will see a drastic change in the way enterprises conduct business. Take micro-blogging, for example; the Twitter-style messages that inform your friends what you're up to or working on.

To this end, the micro-messaging service Yammer recently announced they've raised US$ 5 million in series A financing. The popular workplace micro-messaging service has been adopted by companies and groups that need a hosted, simple-to-use micro-messaging platform.

Google, one of the Internet's darling companies, is finally starting to feel the economic downtown. Changes are headed for a few Google services including Google Notebook, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Video, Google Mashup Editor and messaging service Jaiku.

While these services have a strong following, they don't fit in with Google's long term strategy and are, therefore, being jettisoned to save on personnel time and upkeep.

The first release of Mozilla’s in-browser messaging/content aggregation client was--at best--a terribly executed extension backed by a good idea and a cool looking logo. 

A new web service aims to bring new functionality to the microblogging space. Yonkly recently launched into public beta and seems similar to Twitter and Tumblr, but with many more features and capabilities. Yonkly was recently mentioned in one of our posts.

For starters, users can create a microblogging site around any subject area they want. Example networks featured on Yonkly's site include a "Twitter" for Christians, one for Hokies fans and iSweat dedicated to exercise and fitness.

Microblogging is growing at an exceedingly rapid rate. As a result, more and more services pop-up regularly trying to corner the microblog front. The newest of these microblog innovators is Buzzable. Buzzable brings the idea of having your own social network and applies it to microblogging.

Microblogging is one of the fastest forms of social interaction online today. And sites like Twitter are at the top of the traffic ladder according to Alexa. Now you can get your own. Shout‘Em is releasing its first public beta trial of the system some are calling the “Ning of Twitter”.

What happens when you take Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, chat rooms, video conferencing and forums; mix them with a popular open-source CMS and apply this solution to the education environment?

This is exactly what Social Media Classroom (SMC) is doing in hopes of bringing two-way dialogue and interaction to the education field.

It’s back - yes it is. Jaiku has arisen from the depths of Google and is now offering unlimited invites to all. Google acquired the microblogging service back in the October of last year and we’ve heard very little about it since then. Perhaps now that school is back in, Google sees an opportunity to grab a market away from Twitter.