Neha Tiwari Pvt. Ltd.

Like any niche online, the micro-blogging space is technically limitless. Any group of talented geeks can put together a place where friends can communicate frankly. Practically speaking, with so many sites interested in what you are doing every second, there are so many places one can post before the next moment passes.

Being one of those people who are social network obsessed, I had to check out Plurk.com.

The site can best be described as a place to express yourself in a time line format, and receive comments all classified chronologically. After you sign in, you can use qualifiers like loves, hates, likes, is, wishes, etc. to share how you feel. I do wish there was a “need” qualifier, as that seems to be a basic one that is left out. Plus, if you want to go freestyle and have your own qualifier, you can do that too. After you have selected the word, you can continue with a sentence or link, making it somewhat like Pownce [where you can also share a link and get comments].

Another item that is like Pownce is the ability to make sets of friends, or “cliques.” This can make it easier to send a note to the few rather than the many. In terms of UI, the site has a colorful look with some different templates, but I would like to see more.

Plurk does have a lot in common with Twitter and Pownce. The thing that sets it apart may be the one that is hardest to get used to: the time line. With hundreds of friends, it’s almost over stimulation with the amount of information coming in every minute. Plurk did add an “add, but don’t follow” option a few days after it was launched, but it still can be hard to comprehend all that is occuring. I liken this to reading Arabic to most other languages; it’s a different direction [right to left]. Twitter, Pownce, and even the personalized Facebook homepage deliver linear content while Plurk gives it to us horizontally.

There is also a karma point system that I honestly don’t get the point of. It seems that with more karma points you can have a different ugly doll like creature on your time line, and unlock more emoticons. Not so enticing as a feature, unless you are weirdly into that type of thing [a dancing banana emoticon is good enough for me!]

Test it out for yourselves and let me know what you think of it. Plurk is a fun looking site with a good concept, but I am unsure of who it will appeal to or if it can compete with the micro-blog heavy weights. Scoble first commented that Plurk may be a good place to go when Twitter was down, but later stated that he “hates plurk.” I definitely don’t hate it and will continue to Plurk on. However, It won’t be the first thing I log onto anytime soon and will have to stand in line behind the big boys that came before it.

This week, I got a very strange messege in my Facebook inbox:

Bad grammar aside, there was a legitimate claim here. Basically, a Delhi-based girl on Orkut, a popular social network in Brazil and India, is using my picture as her very own!

As I have mentioned before, I have a number of friends on dating sites. On Shaadi.com, Jdate, etc. they often watermark the images for authenticity. Although the altered identity may not be such a big deal on a social networking site as a dating site, it’s still an odd feeling to come across yourself in fake form.

Should contemporary social networks start adding more protection from identity grabbers? At some point,Friendster must have thought about this urge to steal photos off of someones profile.

With the added ability to literally “grab” the photos of your friends, Friendster not only enables but somewhat encourages this strange behavior. To their credit, you can see who has “grabbed” your photos and if it’s your creepy ex boyfriend–be worried. I currently have this disabled on my account, and would rather not be part of anyone’s profile album but my own.

Even without built-in snagging abilities, trusty ‘right click+save image as’ works just as well. My albums on Facebook are private, except for my profile pictures which I would not want to make private, even if given the option. However, that is where my photo was lifted from and re-purposed.

More than anything, I just think this whole incident is strange. I mean, why me? Why not Jessica Alba or Aishwarya Rai? It reminds me so much (to a lesser extent) of “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Plus, she apparently has like 200+ friends, which is funny since I have like one Orkut friend. Trust me, it’s fine–I do not use Orkut unless I have to research something. Anyway, Ms. Chopra, if you are reading this please stop pretending to be me. I am sure you have a great picture of yourself that you can use!

My last blog post was on April 28, 2008. My last pownce was 22 hours ago. I updated my Facebook status message 3 hours ago. And my latest tweet was 1 minute ago.

With all this up-to-the-minute information of what I am doing or how I feel, I have to wonder if personal blogs are becoming a thing of the past.

Using sites like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, and to some extent Myspace/Facebook status messages keeps everyone in the know of how you feel, and what you are doing. Your friends can also respond with comments on your post (as seen on Pownce), or reply via a symbol trigger (@ on Twitter, ! on Pownce). Long-form blogs serve the same purpose, except allow a longer rant, and more in depth self-plugging abilities. So what’s the point of updating your blog when you can literally post the entire thing on Pownce? Is it simply aesthetic or RSS related?

Many of my peers and friends have made careers based on their blogs. Religiously posting their latest discovery or review, videos, etc. they have garnered great visibility with their own dot com. But even those folks seem to be moving towards twittering more, and Wordpressing less.

Like any new form of communication, or technology for that matter, the “old way” starts to diminish as more and more people jump onto the more convenient bandwagon of their choice. I do feel that micro-blogging is at its root more accessible. With services like twhirl, ping.fm,brightkite, twinkle, one can essentially mini-blog from anywhere at anytime, to more than one micro-facet. Services like those mentioned keeps popping up like your backyards’ gophers; there’s a new pile of dirt almost every time you look. The laptop-cafe culture of the late 90s is dying; the time of the smarphone API or dumbphone texting service is now.

Some may say that I am in a bubble, living in the very tech forward San Francisco, working for a new media company at that. On that same token, new ideas and ways of life are given birth here and spread to the rest of the nation like wildfire. The second sure sign of a paradigm shift: A number of people who add or follow me on these micro-blogs are under the age of 20.

Will Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger and the like go the way of the Do Do bird? Have you noticed this trend or are a purveyor of it yourself?