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yet another Microsoft blogger

# Thursday, April 05, 2007

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Twitter Analogy

Email is to Instant Messaging as Blogging is to Twitter

I think Twitter is just group IM. I've been wondering about the relative merits and recent popularity of twitter, and came to the realization that it's very similar to blogging.

In a way blogging simply made your conversation public. Twitter makes your IM style conversations public.

Both Email and IM are similar in that:

  • You send messages to specific people
  • You can't subscribe to messages
  • You need to know ahead of time who you are sending the message to
  • You can't search Google for private emails or IM.

 

Both Blogging and Twitter are similar in that:

  • You typically broadcast messages/content to everyone
  • You can subscribe to people you are interested in
  • You don't need to know ahead of time who you are broadcasting to
  • You can search for any archived content.

I think Twitter has it's place... it's just a twist on Instant Messaging.

Software
Posted Friday, April 06, 2007    Permalink    Comments [1]  View blog reactions

 

Friday, April 06, 2007 10:56:29 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
It's more accurate to say Twitter is the child of IM and Blogs.

It's different than IM cause I don't expect an answer like I do when I IM someone who is online.

It's different than blogs cause there's a far more communal, instant, feel to it all.
Robert Scoble
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