I’m looking for some kind of tool or design that can help me microblog. I love the concept of small, often trivial, updates about your life and thoughts, and the possibility for others to comment on them. I do this all the time on the blog, but the design is a bit clunky for that, since it needs to work for longer posts too. It would be nicer to have a separate blog/tool to use for those micro updates, like I do with Facebook and the status updates. I just want a more free format than Facebook.
I have used Jaiku, Twitter, Bloggy and Facebook, but the problem with the first three have been that none of my friends use them. It feels a bit pointless to shout silly things about your life out in the empty cyberspace :) It would feel less silly if it was on my own domain, or if I knew there were friends listening, I think. As I said, Facebook works and it is quite fun, but it’s not as free as I want it to be.
I want this blog to have the more lengthy posts, and separate it from the mini updates about life. Maybe it would be enough just to create different categories, I don’t know, I’m not sure how I want this to look yet.
Tips? Ideas?
Hm.
Can’t you have Twitter as a small box on this page? So people see your mini-updates? I’ve seen it in other places… But I’m not sure one would be able to answer to it without having Twitter oneself…
I can have Twitter show up, I managed that before, somehow. But as you say, you still need a Twitter account to answer properly.
Have you thought about using asides? They are posts that are treated differently to longer blog posts. You can use a category like “asides” and some code in your theme that says if a post is in that category then style it differently, maybe without a headline and with less info.
Oh, but you should just use Twitter and get more people on it :P
Hmm. I need to look up how that would work, it sounds interesting. I didn’t think you could style it differently just with the help of a category. WordPress labyrinth documentation, here I come.. -_-
The problem with Twitter is that you can’t comment in a nice way, things are lost in a weird stream. That’s why I preferred Jaiku, they are real mini blog posts which you can comment on. Although I could actually be convinced to use Twitter, if more used it. It’s not that big in Sweden, iirc :P