Metafluence

Microblogging is a key component to gaining and maintaining users

Many people may have negative things to say about microblogging. It’s a fad. It has no “real” value. It’s just a feature, not a whole website. Despite what the naysayers have in their arsenal, I’d say the most important thing to pay attention to when it comes to microblogging is that people love it. In addition to that, people join the sites where their friends are. Therefore, the winner of the microblogging format will command a significant audience shere in the next few years of the Internet.

Not too long ago I wrote a post about microblogging pointing out the benefits of microblogging. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits I left out of that article completely, which is that the reason the big players should pay attention to microblogging is that it will pull in and retain registered users.

Jyri Engeström, founder of Jaiku, compared content creation times of 1 blog post per week, 1 photo per day, and 1 microblog per hour. Similarly, the folks behind Creating Passionate Users created a chart showing that microblogging happens many times a day more than other communication types.

The MySpace generation already loves text messaging, and the microblogging format lends itself well to that length of communication. And, since that crowd is already well-versed in the world of SMS, they will and have already taken well to the mobile connection of microblogging.

A report released by Com Score shows that social networks tend to have popularity that is stratified by countries. To me, this further verifies that people like to participate in social networks where their friends are. Danah Boyd talks about this connection all of the time.

Say what you will about the format, but the usage will only increase and people will go where their friends are. If you are one of the big players in the web and looking to gain and defend user share, then you better get on board with microblogging.