Library clips

Patrick Lambe picks up on a post via Beth Kanter about Benjamin Greenberg’s slidedeck on the benefits of internal blogging.

A few of the slides mention when email is more appropriate than blogging and vice versa, and Patrick Lambe riffs on this:

“The more we can siphon off the non-time sensitive stuff into channels that are more suited to them, the more we’ll be able to calm the raging torrent of email that threatens to drown us.”

Well put…social tools are not a total replacement, there is a time for their use, if the information is not time pertinent, and not private, and intended for a lot of people, then blogs are perfect…and of course it’s a public archive…and unintended people may come across and be able to add something of value.

I’ve posted a few times on blogging vs email, my main concern is that instead of sending a broadcast email you blog it, but what about those you want to reach who are not subscribed.

The internal enterprise blog I use enables me to see a list of people who are subscribed to my blog, this helps in the confidence that I know it will reach all relevant people.
These people will receive the new blog post in their email client…they can choose to reply (leave a blog comment) right from that email.

Since I can post to the blog by email, another option would be, adding the blog address and the recipients who are not subscribers to the blog, in the to: field, this way I can still capture my intended audience with one post.

Publishing a post by email (with the blog address in the to: field) is a great feature, the simplicity of blogging for those addicted to the email client format…plus blog comments via email.

This brings social tools to where people are comfortable…slowly people may take to visiting the blog, but at least we have step one of spoiling them by bring the blog to the email environment.

In a past blog post I mentioned that perhaps a manager can subscribe an email group to a blog, this way people have no choice of receiving blog posts. This sounds harsh, but they would be receiving this content as email anyway. And there should be a way to change the default setting to not being able to unsubscribe.
I’m just talking about team updates and releases…this is content team members need to see.

The only reason this could get annoying is in a group blog, but as long as all bloggers stick to the topic of the blog, posting “must see” content (for all people to see) that is pertinent to your job, then that’s OK.
Information that is just for a few people can still be done in email, or better still a more specific blog.
NOTE: blogs are not the only new way of information exchange, an enterprise version of Pownce would enable conversation between a select few, which is archived in a central space. You could even use an informal community space, which would have blogs and forums.

I’ve also mentioned before an OPML package that is catered to your job position eg. someone joins the organisation as IT Support…they are then given an OPML (a batch of RSS feeds you can subscribe to in one go). They are instantly in the loop, they can visit the archives to see what was going on in the past.
Or as mentioned before, someone new is put into email groups, and in turn these email groups are subscribed to various blogs.

A great quote from one of the slides:

“We decide when we tune into information rather than having to let it interrupt our work.”

The slidedeck talks about setting aside a time to visit the blog, as mentioned earlier some blog platforms don’t just post notifications, they also include the content, and a reply will leave a blog comment…in turn others will receive an email with the content of the comment, and so on. You don’t have to save these emails, as it’s all in the searchable blog archive.

Here is the slide that really hits home about, email vs blogs for discussion, this type of communication is where blogs shine:

I won’t bother going into the more clean discussion we have using blogs over email, it’s really self evident.

I think blogs shine for announcement/release posts as well.
At work we get an email about server down time etc…now we have so many servers for different products that we are always getting these emails. I read them then delete them, but then if I want to remember one of these emails I can’t as I deleted them, and I’m not about to start collecting these type of emails.
Whenever I want to be reminded of the status of a server, or the stage of a release, I could just visit the blog…plus I could ask a question in the comments.

Now since everyone in the organisation needs to receive this content it’s not a good idea that this blog has subscribers. Instead a broadcast email can be sent to the office and to the blog email address as well, this way recipients get one email only, and the email is posted to the blog as well.
NOTE: the email will always have a link to the blog homepage, saying if you have a question click here to leave a comment.

Now if someone leaves a comment, only the blog owner will get an email notification, and the commenter can choose to receive comment notifications for that post only.
Sure if the whole office was subscribed to the blog it would be easier, just post and people will get content in a new email, but we don’t want the whole office receiving comments…this type of thing is suited to blogs with a smaller subscriber set.
NOTE: The given here is that if you subscribe to the blog, you are also subscribed to comments…with some platforms you have to subscribe to comments separately.

Whenever the server manager wants to see past downtimes, they have a whole log of this stuff in the blog archive. Perhaps the IT server team could be subscribers to this blog, so multiple people can deal with general comments, and also they can use the comments to discuss the job duty between themselves.

I see 7 types of blogs:

Office - announcements/news/releases

Project/Business Unit - announcements/news/releases

Smaller teams - announcements/news/releases

Activity - share/correspond/updates

Work (group/individual) - eg. support tips

Interest (group/individual) - eg. topic blogs

Personal (private/public) - a person’s log on their experience, thoughts, feedback, etc…

Email is great as it allows very simple unstructured free form correspondence, but it doesn’t do the discussion, and archiving part well at all. Blogs are just as simple and unstructured, its forte is publishing, subscription, longevity, etc…in fact here is 10 reasons why blogs are better than email.

Blogs are not the only social tools that can have more impact than just relying on email, check out: Instead of sending an email…

Here are three blogs posts about internal blogging:

Project Blogs, Email, and Dual Collaboration Channels (adoption)
Project Management Blogs - How to Run Your Project on the Web (types)
How to use Blogs in the Workplace (approach)

Here are some posts about why email is strong and how it can help web adoption:

Email is critical to Enterprise 2.0 and Office 2.0
Email: The Good Enough Collaboration Tool

Forums

I’m not going to go into the differences between blogs and forums, but just say an email discussion has just started about a topic like “project folder structures in the document management system”…more people keep creeping in and out of this conversation, most people only know half the discussion, etc…

When a topic of discussion begins in email, the knowledge worker must set up a quick forum so the discussion can be centralised…this isn’t a task, this is how a worker gets things done, and the tools have to be as easy as email (most forums can be done by email anyway).

This can be done in a Community of Practice (CoP), but then some people in the discussion may not be members of the CoP. On this occasion it’s not really a full on CoP, it’s just a place to have this 2 month discussion, an on the fly forum is perfect for this.

What about a blog.?

I see blogs more as publishing with comments, whereas I see a forum as specifically a place to discuss. So sure you can do this in a group blog, or distributed blogs, but for this situation or intention, a forum is best.

Here is the slidedeck:

A couple of days ago I posted on the various micro-blogging services, but I still have more to say…this post is more specifically about how the various services deal with conversation.

Like blogs, micro-blogging is about publishing, only more spontaneous, and usually within a social network. Sometimes this limited publishing space is called presence posting as you only have enough space to say something like: where you are or what your doing or will be doing…but really this space can be used for any type of content. What makes micro-blogging so spontaneous is that it is mostly coupled with mobile access, whether that’s mobile web, SMS/MMS or email. This mobile access is why it was perhaps first talked about as presence posting…when you are on the go, you can publish your agenda and availability.

Micro-blogging is not only about publishing, it’s also about people, and just like the blogosphere, there is conversation.

Let’s examine some brief differences and how each service presents conversation.

Jaiku

LIFESTREAM
Jaiku has profile aggregation which sets it apart from Twitter and Pownce.

You can make a spliced feed from all your profiles using FeedDigest, and then use Twitterfeed to enable Twitter to lifestream like Jaiku, but I prefer keeping up with friendstreams and microblogging apart. Reason being is I find it hard enough keeping up with my Twitter stream, and if these included content from elsewhere it would just get in the way.

In saying this, Twitter is an excellent candidate for lifestreaming, if they implemented it, we could have another tab in the user page:
- My Twitter stream
- My Twitter stream with Friends
- Friends
- Replies
- My Lifestream
- My Twitter stream and Lifestream
- My Friendstream
- My Friendstream and Friends Twitter stream

It would be good if Jaiku could separate the profile aggregated content into a separate lifestream, or if we could at least see just micro posts in one stream.

ICONS
Jaiku has icons for each post…this gives more context of presence or location.

CHANNELS
Jaiku also as a channels feature where you append your post with a (#) tag and it will also appear in a channel.

LOCATION AWARENESS AND AVAILABILITY
If you use their download phone app:
- it can even locate your current location using cell towers
- locate closest friends using Bluetooth
- share your calendar
- share your ring profile availability

So as we can see Jaiku is about profile aggregation, micro-blogging, channel chat, and I can see with Google’s help it’s really going to differentiate itself in the presence/location awareness game, for more see:
Mobile presence : Iotum-Talk Now and “The Swarm”
Mobile motion presence and location awareness

I can see greatly why Jaiku can still do well against the Twitter darling, as it has some different uses that Twitter doesn’t offer.

CONVERSATION
Every item in Jaiku has comments, even the lifestreaming items.

When you make a comment, this also becomes a post in your stream, this means comments appear in two spots, under the original post and also in the stream.

Jaiku user page
- displays a users posts and comments
- doesn’t display content from their contacts (this is called “Overview” in the dashboard view)
- doesn’t display comments made to your posts as posts themselves, you have to you click under each item to see comments

In all your public page when seen by others doesn’t give a clear picture of conversation.

Dashboard view
- displays a users posts and comments
- displays content from their contacts (Overview)
- displays as a new post in the stream when someone leaves a comment on one of your posts or someone else’s post

The dashboard view gives much more of a notion of the conversations taking place…not sure why the public user page can’t be the same.

Another thing I like is, not only do you get the benefit of conversation in the stream (as a comment is also a post itself), but comments are also aggregating under the initial post…others can catch up on the conversation in a tidy thread.

What would be good in the dashboard view is to have a tab to another stream to just see a list of comments people have made on your posts. This is a good idea incase you haven’t used Jaiku in a couple of days, and want to catch up with what people are saying to you. Then again this is what email alerts are for, just like when you get new comments on a regular blog.

Is this really conversation at it’s best?

I’m not too sure, in this instance conversation happens around objects (posts)…unless you post something, no-one can comment you.
Conversations thrive when it’s people to people, which is lacking ie. in Jaiku you cannot post and push it to someone (like IM, SMS, email, etc…).

With Twitter you can ping another user with a private or public post, this is what makes Twitter conversations more thriving as it doesn’t have to be based around objects (posts).

Twitter

Twitter has two differentiating features: replies and direct messages.

As mentioned Jaiku does not have private messages, and it does not have public messages either, if you want to ping a person, it has to be in the context of one of their posts (leaving a comment), so this really makes Jaiku more like blogs, only micro-blogs within a network of friends. And the stream is kind of like an RSS Reader river of news as you can see your friends posts streaming past.

Another difference with Twitter is besides your contacts (friends or people you follow), you also have people who are following you, kind of like seeing how many times you are subscribed to within the Twitter system.

Twitter user page
- updates (your stream)
- with others (your stream and your friends stream in one stream)

NOTE: replies appear in your “with others” stream

Dashboard View
- recent (your stream and your friends stream in one stream)
- archive (your stream)
- replies (public tweets sent to you)

NOTE: replies also appear in your “recent” stream, as well as replies your friends make to their friends (you can limit this to just mutual friends)

CONVERSATION

Twitter has a feature called direct messages, this is kind of like email or private messages in most social networks, it basically enables you to send a friend a private message, these are read in your sent box and inbox.

First I’ll make it clear, Twitter posts don’t have comments!

Twitter’s winning feature is @replies…this is the public messages feature. I don’t know why it’s called replies, as it’s not only used in a reactive way, you can use it to initiate a shoutout.

This feature really makes Twitter a conversational tool, just as much as a publishing tool.

If you want to send a message to another user (whether they are your friend or not), you just append the message with “@name”
eg. @abby are we going to yoga tonight?

This will appear in your “you and others” stream or as Jaiku calls it “Overview” (as mentioned this view is not available in the public user page).
It will also appear in another stream called “replies”, this displays all tweets with @yourname in it.

Now, coincidentally if you see a tweet you want to comment on, you just send an @reply post.
This could be a tweet that has caught your interest or it could be a shoutout (reply) tweet that someone has sent you.

What happens is that tweets that begin with @name have a link at the end of the tweet labelled “in reply to”, clicking this will take you to the initial tweet that is being replied to.

But this is really not so all the time, any tweet that begins with @name will link to the last tweet of that person.
If I send a @name tweet as a shoutout
eg. @abby are we going to yoga tonight? the end of this tweet will have a link to abby’s last tweet which may be eg. what a great sunny morning. This really has nothing to do with my tweet I’m sending her, they are not related whatsoever.

The other problem is even if you are replying to a tweet, what happens when the user makes more tweets before you get to reply.

I say eg. @abby are we going to yoga tonight?, then I make another tweet eg. people talking loud on the train. Then abby tweets @johnt yoga sounds good. The end of abby’s tweet will link to my tweet about people talking loud on the train…this just isn’t right.

Twitter’s initial focus was command posting by SMS, problem is you can’t send a reply targeted to the ID of a particular tweet, and a shoutout isn’t targeted to anything, it’s an initiator post.

So 3 things:
- @name can be used for shoutouts and replies
- a @name post will link to the last post of the person you are replying/shoutout to
- Twitter replies/shoutouts seem to be more progressive chat (like IM) rather than just object focused comments.

Sure the conversation can be easily followed as it happens, but you can’t really look at past conversations as there lacks a threaded feature.

CHANNELS
Like Jaiku Twitter has a 3rd party service called hastags that enables channels.

Pownce

FILES
Pownce is not just text you can also send files

CONTENT TYPE
Pownce has templates for content type eg. text, links, files, events
- you can later filter content by type

CONVERSATION
NOTE: comments you make, and comments others make to you, appear as new posts of their own, as well as appearing under a post…this is like Jaiku.

NOTE: Pownce doesn’t have lifestreaming

Pownce User Page
- user (your stream)
- user with friends (your stream and your friends stream in one stream)

Dashboard View
- default setting is “all notes and replies”
(your posts, your replies as new posts, your friends posts, your friends replies to you as new posts)

What Pownce has over Jaiku is:
- in the public view people get to see your content, and friends content in one stream…this is only available in the Jaiku dashboard view.

But the issue with both Pownce and Jaiku is:;
- comments you make, and comments others make to you don’t appear as new posts in the public user view, this only happens in the dashboard view
- in saying this, in the public view, you can still read comments by clicking the comments link that live under posts.

What Jaiku has over Pownce is:
- comments your friends make to others, doesn’t appear in either view (dashboard view only for Jaiku)

But where these two services shine is that the comments are also accumulated (just like a blog) under a post, this way a conversation is all neat and tidy…as mentioned Twitter has a problem with distilling conversations around an object.

But Pownce is different…

You can group your friends into sets so you can just post to a set of people, you can also post to individuals…your public page will only show posts that you have made public.

When you post in Pownce you have a choice of audience:
- public
- all my friends
- a set
- private (an individual)

This means you can send a shoutout to one person, but it’s not in public, it’s more like Twitter direct messages. This lacks the conversation market effect of Twitter, but nonetheless you can shoutout.

Your public user page will only show posts you and your friends send as “public”

Within your dashboard you can filter for content:
- all notes and replies
- notes
- replies
- private notes (can’t specify an individual)
- non-public notes
- sent by me
- sent to a set

You can also filter below, but you can’t do something like show me all events posted by me:
- messages
- links
- files
- events

This is what really sets Pownce apart, the fact the you can have content aimed at all different people and groups within the same filtered stream. With the same service you can engage in both a formal (public, all friends) and informal (sets, individuals) network.

Conclusion

Twitter is a conversation market, whether you’re in your dashboard or your public page, anyone can see a stream of the conversation, items you see:
- your posts
- your friends posts
- your replies/shoutouts
- your friends replies/shoutouts to you
- your friends replies/shoutouts to friends you have in common (you can even set this to include friends you don’t have in common)

Pownce and Jaiku have these 5 features above (excluding replies for a comments mechanism) only in the dashboard view (exception is that Pownce doesn’t show comments your friends make on their friends posts).

But the main reason that makes Twitter more of a conversation market is that conversations can be more like chatting, they don’t have to be in the context of an object (commenting on a post), instead it’s more person to person, kind of like a chat room or a public IM conversation.

Whereas with Jaiku and Pownce conversations are around an object (the micro-post), this is just like the blogosphere.

As mentioned Twitter is replying or shouting out to a person, whereas the others are around an object, Twitter also has direct messages so you can chat in private.

In saying this Pownce allows you to send a post to an individual or a set of people, and that individual or someone from the set can send a post back or reply, so this makes it both a conversation around an object or a person (or set of people), only it’s not displayed on the public user page, in other words you can’t have a conversation with an individual in public…I like that you can do this in Twitter as it makes it viral, you can jump into conversations.

But then Pownce is the tool of choice for trust based informal networks, the fact that you can use the same system to post to: public, friends, a set of friends, or an individual makes it very versatile.

The “set” feature (organising friends in groups) is not really that much better than email conversations.
When you post to a set, each recipient will see who else got the post. When a recipient replies, all initial people get the post. This is exactly like email (to: field, reply to all).
At this stage I don’t think you can include others in the conversation, the post can only be forwarded (just like email). Reason for this is the recipients are based on the initiators set of friends, it’s not a communal channel.
But the good thing is that the conversation is archived.

More

Tumblr falls into a similar category as Jaiku:
- profile aggregator
- friend stream view
- upload files
- 3rd party comments
- re-blog posts (unlike Jaiku)

Plaxo Pulse seems to be a combination:
- profile aggregator
- friend stream view
- comments
- re-share posts
- post and filter stream by contact sets (like Pownce)
- private messages
- comment wall
- status update (like Facebook)

As far as conversations go Plaxo Pulse is more similar to Jaiku and Pownce than Twitter.
But, unlike Jaiku and Pownce comments are not shown as new posts in Plaxo Pulse.
You can filter a stream by content type, but since comments you make are not posts of their own, this means you can’t filter content by comments you have made. I would like to be able to collect comments in a stream, just like Pownce, or Twitter for that matter (Pownce doesn’t further filter to “replies just by me”, instead it has both; replies others have made to me, and replies I have made to others).

Plaxo Pulse has status updates (like Facebook), but unlike Facebook people can leave comments on Plaxo Pulse status updates.
But you can’t filter by this content type, ie. see a stream of just status updates.
Similar to Facebook you have micro-posts (eg. notes, posted-items), Plaxo Pulse calls them (Messages, Links, etc…)

Plaxo Pulse also has lifestreaming.

So what are posts in Jaiku, Twitter and Pownce more similar to:
- the Plaxo Pulse posts or the Plaxo Pulse status updates

Other conversations

We have been talking about explicit conversations, another perspective is keeping up on a conversation about a topic, where people are not directly having the conversation with each other.
An example of this is Twitter tracking, where you can track occurrences of a word/s eg. california fire.
Several Twitter search engines have a word burst type feature to see the latest posts with the term eg. “fire”.

Then, as mentioned we have Channels, in Twitter’s case a service called hashtags…now this is posts about the same topic, not just posts that have a word in it, it’s more about aboutness. But still this is not explicit conversation, it’s stuff on the same topic.

Trackbacks

Coming back to explicit conversation…what is a trackback or inlink in micro-blogging?

In the blogosphere you can leave a comment on a blog post, or publish your own post and ping (trackback) the blog post you are talking about, so the person you are pinging is notified that you are contributing to the conversation from your own blog. The person you pinged will have a link to your post in the comments section of their blog post, it’s almost like leaving a remote comment.

If you don’t ping that person (trackback), they may still find out you have talked about them, as you may have linked to their blog post. If this person organises themselves to be notified whenever someone links to their blog, they will see your post and read it as part of the conversation.
I posted on these distributed conversations a long time ago…the main deal was being able to distill this stuff.

The other thing is because the blogosphere is not a social network where you add friends, or just look at the public page, you won’t really know these conversations are happening. The blogosphere is distributed, but let’s see if we can make it into a distributed social network.

How do trackbacks relate to microblogging?

JAIKU
- there isn’t a way to write a post and ping another post, to let them know your post is conversing with them.
- there is no way for someone to know if someone is trying to converse with them
- the only way is leaving a comment (I suppose when you leave a comment, it also becomes a post…it’s like doing a trackback the other way around)

POWNCE
- same as above
- after I write the post, I could use the “forward” feature to forward it to the person I’m talking about, but only if they are on my friend list
- instead I could write the post, and just send it to them, instead of making it public, but then the public is out of the loop in this conversation…and again the person must be on my friend list.

TWITTER
- this works more like trackbacks
- I can write a post eg. @abby is a cool dancer too - and abby will be notified I’m talking to her or about her
- I’m not really pinging one of her posts like in the blogosphere, instead I’m pinging her

Once again Twitter shows that it is an all round conversational tool, as much as it is a publishing tool…it really blurs the boundary of status, blogging and IM (chat).

Related

How I use the various micro blogging services
FAQ: Is decentralized Twitter just IRC?
Prologue - WordPress based distributed Twitter
The Evolution of Personal Publishing

First I’ll say that most micro blogging services are within a network environment and are set up to not only publish but to also converse, and some even are profile aggregator streams or lifestreams.

There is also a blur on what micro blogging actually means…other terms used are status, and presence.
eg.
Plaxo Pulse and Facebook are more about status.
Twitter and Jaiku are more about presence.
Tumblr and Pownce are more about micro-blogging…but then Pownce doesn’t really look like a stand alone blog. Actually I can’t define Pownce…you are publishing, and the posts can be longer then Twitter, but they are usually not too long like Tumblr, you can also send files, and posts can be directed to different sets of people. I see Pownce more of a sharing service, rather than publishing, even though it still is publishing. Most of the time these days you don’t have to push too much sharing, as people can just tune into your flow.

Just to confuse both Plaxo Pulse and Facebook have messages/notes and links/posted items, which is basically micro-blogging, in addition to their status feature.
And just when you thought lifestreaming was a standalone type of service, we have Jaiku, Tumblr and Plaxo Pulse each with a profile aggregator stream feature.
Some of the services above like Plaxo Pulse and Tumblr allow you to reblog stuff into your stream.
Then we have lifestreaming services like Ziki and others that enable you to post inhouse content into your stream.

When you look at it Plaxo Pulse has lifestreaming, re-blogging, micro-posting, and status.

Maybe mobile web or SMS/MMS has a role to play in the definition.

I think the level of context (and content) goes like this:

Online indicator (availability)
Status
Presence
Micro-blogging
Blogging

First some more traditonal methods:

Email
- more personal or private correspondence
- the sender and receiver don’t need the same email client to correspond
- Gmail has great search features

I used Twitter to ask if anyone had an invite to a new service, the first question was, what’s your email address, and I’ll send you an invite.

In saying all this, I really don’t use email much, it’s becoming more my central notification spot
ie notifications for new friends, comments, etc…also see Fuser.

People can send you messages many other ways, but most of the time they have to use that same system, and they figure that you would check your email more frequently than the 10 social networks you’re in.

IM
- private chat (one or multiple people)
- not published (only Gmail archive)

Other options:
- Meebo rooms
- Tangler
- Chinswing

Blog
More editorial based, I don’t just publish a post in a split second, it’s more thorough.
Still converational based via comments, but in a distributed network.

Lifestream eg. Ziki
- Profile aggregator or lifestream
- social network (add and msg friends)
- friendstream
- publish ziki blog posts into your lifestream

People really don’t add me as friends here, or message me.
My RSS Reader is more my friendstream…most people splice their feeds with content from other services…also see Spokeo.
In saying this I’m going to check out FriendFeed, to see if that’s where the community is at.

I just used Ziki as an example of a lifestream service, check out the list here.

MyBlogLog
I don’t use this at all, no-one messages me.

MICRO BLOGGING

Pownce
I find this an awesome service, but it’s just not where the community is at for me.
But still I have found a use for it, how it differs is that you can have sets of friends and publish content to everyone, a set or an individual.

How I’m using Pownce mostly is a text, link and file sharing model between me and a friend, if one day others want to join our informal network, then they can easily be included. We trust each other and have a private place to share stuff. Plus we can use comments for discussion.

What I need is to get into my database a bit more, I can see all my posts sent to a set of people, but not individuals.
I can see all posts a person has sent by going to their profile (of course I will not be able to see non-public posts, unless I was a chosen recipient), but what about posts that were just sent to me, and could I do this from my profile.
I’d like the freedom to say “show me all my posts that Gerry is allowed to see, and show me all Gerry’s posts that I’m allowed to see, in the one archive”…or “show me all posts Gerry has just sent to me, and vice versa in the one stream.”

I think Pownce would really suit the enterprise, a knowledge worker can publish their thoughts, others can subscribe to receive content, they can leave comments for discussion (a comment by default becomes a post in your stream).
What I like mostly is that it’s great for trust models of informal networks, the fact you can share information with a closed set of people within the same system.
With Pownce you have a formal and informal network occuring within the same system.
All they need to do is add expert tags, and a content tag cloud.
I suppose they could also have formal groups.

Right now I can share with the world, a set of people, an individual, but there are no formal groups.

In another post I will look at formal groups (CoPs) and see how useful they still are in a world of social networks.

Check out more on Pownce from my post: A quest to discovering a private text and link sharing service

Tumblr
The link above also describes Tumblr…again this is micro blogging as well as the option to automate content by aggregating or re-syndicating feeds into your Tumblr stream. In other words you could use Tumblr as a lifestream and never actually directly publish in it.

Tumblr allows you to add friends, this allows you 2 streams, just my posts, or posts from me and all the people I follow.
You can also filter posts by content type: text, images, audio, video, etc…

I like the idea of reblogging posts into your stream, and if a post has been reblogged it will show the who has reblogged it and their post content.

There are various ways to post to Tumblr which helps
- web, bookmarklet, IM (Imified), jott, desktop widget, and email.

Since I use Twitter mostly as my presence posting, I thought I would have no use for Tumblr, as it’s similar…but is it, I don’t quite see the conversation aspect of Tumblr.

I actually think Tumblr is more what Twitter was initially about, but more of a blog feel, slowly I think Tumblr will become more conversational, only I still think it won’t be as chatty as Twitter, it will still be focused on blogging…you can now add a comments module to your Tumblr.

The way I use Tumblr is more non-tech focused stuff, it’s more by thoughts about life, whatever I see on the street, etc…me and my phone. It’s more my moblog (text, photo, video), more fleeting and spontaneous blogging about anything in general.

Twitter can be used like this, but it is not as blog like, I wouldn’t ask a question or chat on Tumblr like I do in Twitter. Twitter is on the pulse of what’s happening, it’s breaking, it just 140 characters compared to Tumblr’s 500…when I think of it my tweets are so disposable or temporary like chat, whereas my Tumbl’s are still spontaneous, but more thoughtful.

A description of the Tumblr features.

Here is a way to see followers/following via your tumblr homepage.

You can also get a list of the URL’s following and followers

But what about when I’m on another users Tumblr, how can I see who they follow. By clicking on people I follow and being able to inturn see who they follow is discovery via my social filter, what more than this do you want these days when you have to choose from a sea of a million sources.

Also we cannot see someone’s dashboard stream of tumbls with others (and RSS version), it also doesn’t have favourites.

Tumblr resources, and more…including the Ning Tumblr community, and Tumblr Universe (Google CSE), which allows you to search the Tumblsphere.

I also found a hack to reblog your own post into a Tumblr group.

Two things I want to see are posting by Gtalk and mostly posting by mobile web (so far they only have a read-only mobile version, here’s an example.)

Jaiku
- presence blogging with comments
- profile aggregator stream (like Tumblr)
- channels

So far Jaiku is the most like Twitter, it doesn’t have the blog feel like Tumblr, and it doesn’t have the selective trust based posting features like Pownce.

I find that I don’t use Jaiku, as it is not unique enough, so I use Twitter instead…who knows in the future, Jaiku may fill a unique need if it gets into status networking like “The Swarm.”

Facebook
- status (via web, email, SMS, IM, etc…)
- also post notes, links, photo’s etc…

This is very unlike the others, this is just one feature of a greater service, it’s more simple, there is no conversation, there is no real promotion of a stream, etc…

The reason I use it is because my messages are for a different audience, these are mostly people I actually know. My Facebook friends don’t use Twitter or any other presence services, so this is all I’ve got with them.

I’ve mentioned presence posting before, and no one is interested (they said that’s such a stupid idea), yet now they are doing it, and not even realising.

Twitter
- presence posts
- replies
- follow others stream

Need I say more.

I haven’t talked about groups:
Twitter has hashtags, Jaiku has channels, Tumblr has more formal groups, and Pownce doesn’t have groups.

Plaxo Pulse
Plaxo Pulse is a combination of a few things, it has profile aggregation or lifesteaming, and like the regular lifestreaming services eg. Ziki, Wink, Dandelife, Profilactic, it also allows you to post content, but with Plaxo posting content is just as big a feature as lifestreaming.

Lifestream
- aggregate your profiles to your stream
(when you add each feed you choose which set of people to share with eg. friends, family, business, nobody, public)

Connections
- when you add a contact, you choose which stream you want to see their content in eg. friends, family, business

Plaxo posting
- when you publish content (message, link, video, note, etc…) you choose which stream/s for this content to appear in eg. friends, family, business

So…
- When you add a connection, you add them to a stream
- When you add an outside feed, you add it to a stream
- When you post content, you add it to a stream

This is great as now you have different variations of your lifestream depending on the audience it’s intended for. For example you may only include your Tumblr feed into your Family stream, and you may post Plaxo content (photo’s links, etc…) for your family eyes only.

This means when you look at your family stream it will have content just intended for that set of people, and when your family members look at their family stream they will see your family oriented content.

BTW, when you look at your family stream, you will see their content as well as yours.

I can filter my family stream to just look at photo’s, or video’s, etc…

Filter
- Me (just my stream)
- Family
- Friends
- Business
- Starred
- Everyone

Status (presence posts)
- leave a comment (a combination of Jaiku and Facebook)

Connections (contacts)
- send message
- comments (public profile comment wall)

Each item in your stream has
- comments
- reshare
- favourite

Other features
- address book
- calendar
- tasks
- notes
- photo album
- groups (you can also post content to a group)

Issues
- how do I share Pulse content like a link or message with public (everyone)
- lacks individuals or create your own sets like Pownce
- everyone is the whole of Pulse…I also want to see a stream of all my contacts
- status is not a content type filter, I’d like to see status archive and a status archive for each of my connection sets (family, friends, etc…)
- when I visit a contact I can only see their stream, I can’t see what their contacts are sharing with everyone ie. a with others stream
- when I visit a contact I can’t filter by content type
- lacks following/followers (just connections)
- I can only notify my own items (I can’t reshare them)

I’m not using Plaxo Pulse, but as you can see it really blurs the lines, it’s basically Facebook with out the crap. It’s a social network (private/public messages, friends), it’s got status, you can post content, you can lifestream, you can have content in different contact streams.

If Plaxo Pulse came earlier in the scene it could of been my main tool.

Both Jaiku and Tumblr are similar, yet Plaxo Pulse also has a status feature, and a more robust friends feature…so I see it most similar to Facebook. If POwnce had a status feature then this would similar, although Pownce does not have lifestreaming…BLUR BLUR BLUR!!

NOTE: Lifestrea.ms allows you to create different profile streams. I’m guessing if someone requests a friendship you can choose which stream to give them…in the end this is similar to Plaxo Pulse (Lifestrea.ms is more complete as it has actual different profiles).

More

Soup.io
- is the same as Tumblr, it’s uncanny
- good thing is that for a given user you can see a stream of their friends stuff and even friends friends stuff, see here for more

Hictu
- similar to Jaiku (aggregation, posting, comments, friends)
- also includes audio and video posts
- started off as an IM status network

MySay
- audio presence

Yodio
- audio/visual mashup presence

Utterz
- post text, audio, photo, video
- audio/visual mashup presence
- post to other networks
- channels
- see more

NowThen
- photo presence
- also see Radar, Flukiest, mobypicture (also post to other networks), cellblock, pixpulse, Yappd

ShouldDoThis
- not really micro-blogging, but I’m addicted
- I wish I could post by email or it had a mobile web version

Seesmic
- video presence and conversations…see more.

Plazes
- a geographic (physical) presence network

Moodmill, lifemetric, iratemyday, emotionr

Blabto, Podobo, Yurbo

Recap

There is an overlap with the terms - presence, micro-blog, status

TWITTER
- presence
- replies as posts
- with others stream
- followers/following
- direct messages
- hashtags (channels)

http://twitter.com/johnt

FACEBOOK
- status (not the focus of the service)
- no replies on status
- private messages
- comment wall
- content publishing (notes, posted items, video, photo’s)…is this micro-blogging?
- news feed stream (similar to following or lifestream)

POWNCE
- micro-blog (also links, files, events)
- comments (replies)…also become posts
- with others stream
- followers/following (fans/friends)
- private messages in the same published content stream (permissions based)

http://www.pownce.com/johnt/public

JAIKU
- presence
- comments
- with others stream (overview)
- contacts (not followers/following)
- no private messages
- channels
- lifestream (feed aggregation)

http://johnt.jaiku.com

PLAXO PULSE
- status
- comments on status
- re-share (reblog)
- private messages
- comment wall
- content publishing (messages, links, video, photo’s)…is this micro-blogging?
- lifestream (feed aggregation)
- additional (tasks, notes, calendar, address book)

http://johntropea.myplaxo.com/

TUMBLR
- microblog (also images, video, audio, etc…)
- comments (via disqus)
- reblog
- with others stream (but only visible to owner)
- followers/following (but only visible to owner)
- no private messages
- groups (member based, this is different to Jaiku and Twitter)
- lifestream (feed aggregation)

http://johntropea.tumblr.com

I wish the social graph portability was here now so I could run my Twitter friends through Tumblr.

For now I’ll rely on a shoutout, If you’re on Tumblr drop a comment!

Conclusion

Micro-blogging services are not all the same, I use:
- Pownce for informal private groups
- Twitter for blabbing
- Facebook for close friends (real friends dare I say it)
- Tumblr for spontaneous blogging

I’m already traditional blogging, collecting bookmarks, podcasts, video’s, etc…yikes!!

Hellotxt is a lovely little nugget, it’s a multi-posting micro-blog service.
Quite often when I post on one of these four services, the context overlaps with the other
eg. I may post on Tumblr, and feel that I’d like that item also on Twitter, Facebook, and Pownce

Just like social networks, I think presence of some iteration is becoming a feature of most apps these days…whatever service comes on the scene, it will always benefit from adding friends and messaging, and seeing presence, these are all interactive, social, and immediacy type features.

As we see in Plaxo Pulse, they have status, but you can also post content…this really blurs the line on what we mean by status, presence and micro-posting…and also lifesteaming.

There are lots of these presence type services out there, but as you can see they are not all the same, I’m using 4 of the main 6 services for different reasons:

Facebook - status and micro-content for my old school friends
Twitter - presence and conversation for my tech friends
Pownce - micro-posts for trust based groups (I use it more for direct sharing, than publishing)
Tumblr - a simple micro-blog as opposed to a more serious traditional blog (I don’t make use of the lifestreaming feature or friends feature at the moment…re-blogging looks fun)

Plaxo Pulse would be an alternative for Facebook, but my network is already on Facebook.
It could also be an alternative to Pownce if it had one to one content sharing…let’s not forget it also has lifestreaming.

Jaiku is like Twitter without the conversation and community for me, but it does have lifestreaming…let’s not forget Twitterfeed.

Related
Mobile presence : Iotum-Talk Now and “The Swarm”