Microblogging

Hey Shawn, Lesa, Sly and whoever else happens to be in the studio this
week. I'm wondering if you could talk about microblogging - Twitter
(http://www.twitter.com), Jaiku (http://www.jaiku.com), and Pownce
(http://www.pownce.com) (currently available by invitation only), etc.

Why did Shawn and Lesa pick Twitter over the other two big names? How do
you guys update Twitter? IM? SMS? Web page? Email? Or another way?

Do you think the balkanisation of microblogging (with new services
coming into existence all the time) will lead to it becoming as useless
as social networking sites? Sites like MySpace and Facebook are just
useless to me unless all my friends are on ONE site. But of course
they're not, they switch to the new flavour of the month, etc *sigh*

I currently have a Pownce account whose posts I copy to Twitter (using
Pownce's RSS feed and (http://www.twitterfeed.com), then I feed
Twitter's RSS feed into Jaiku, thus my Pownce posts reach all my friends
on all three services, though often with considerable delay. But of
course I still have to check Twitter and Jaiku to see my friend's posts.
Things will only get worse when another service begins.

Why do I use Pownce as my primary service? It still lacks many of the
features the other two have like IM and SMS updating (well, to be fair
it is still in alpha - my term. WTF do developers call alpha quality
products beta quality??? Beta means MAJOR FEATURES ARE COMPLETE, but
still buggy! GRRR!), but you can post files and you're not restricted to
only 140 characters. I guess if I was a cellphone addict I'd be using
Jaiku instead. Twitter is too barebones for my tastes, though I can see
how it's simplicity might be attractive to some.

Well, I look forward to hearing your thoughts :-) Thank you, as always,
for the great show!

Regards,
Jamie Kahn Genet

P.S. if anyone needs some Pownce invites I'm only to happy to provide
them :-)
--
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.