The internet allows anyone who can read and write to get acquire any sort of information he or she desires to know about instantaneously. Weather forecasts, news, sports scores, celebrity gossip are popular uses of the internet’s information acquisition abilities, but we also use the internet to look up things we want to know more about. Using the internet is not so one-sided, however. These same people who get so much information from the internet can also put information onto the World Wide Web for other people to browse at their leisure. People can also communicate with one another in a variety of ways, making the world even smaller. Blogging is a phenomenon that sprang from the creation of the internet, allowing everyone from political commentators to schoolchildren to get online and post anything that they want other people to read in their own blog. Micro-blogging is a subset of blogging that is usually done through websites like Twitter.

Micro-blogging is just as the name implies: a form of blogging where the users are limited to brief text updates consisting usually of no more than 200 characters. These messages can either be submitted for view by the public or instead for the perusal of a select group of people who receive the message in the form of a text message, an instant message, an email, an MP3, or through the web. These micro-blogs only allow for a brief personal update, a conversation, or a place to transmit a URL, making them an interesting alternative to normal blogs that can be as sprawling and obtuse as they desire.

Twitter is the most popular of these micro-blogging websites. It combines social networking and micro-blogging in such a way that has drawn much attention worldwide, with over 2 million registered users and much interest in the internet community. The website began as a research and development project inside San Francisco start-up company Obvious in 2006. At first, the platform was used by the employees, but by the end of the year, the company had launched it as its own website. By March 2007, Twitter had already won the 2007 South by Southwest Web Award in the blog category. Since then, over two million registered users, and counting, have launched Twitter into phenomenon status. Even large businesses like Whole Foods and Cisco Systems use Twitter to provide product or service information to those on Twitter. The Los Angeles Fire Department put Twitter to use during the October 2007 California wildfires.

Joining Twitter is as easy as joining Facebook or any other social networking site: just provide a working email address, your chosen username, and input several characters into a box to prove that you are, in fact, a human. You can also opt to sign up for email updates, but the option is left disabled unless you opt to do so – Twitter is not out to spam your inbox once they get your email address. Once you are on Twitter, you can find other friends that are also using Twitter in order to keep them in your loop of people who are updated about what you are doing. You can also read their information to find out exactly what they are up to. Twitter is customizable, allowing you to follow as many friends as you like and stop following at the same time. You can also set Twitter to not disturb you with any information during a certain time period so that you are not interrupted, Twitter’s self-proclaimed antidote to modern information overload.

And that’s it. Twitter is not out to be the next high-tech social networking sight with busy profile pages and extraneous applications. It is simply and ostensibly a way to stay in the loop with your friends and family so that everyone knows what everyone else is doing. If you are about to head out with a group of friends and say so in a tweet – or micro-blog update – you may find yourself with some more interesting people to hang out with as well. If you write that you are frustrated about something, one of your friends may have the perfect solution to your problem. Twitter is all about staying connected to one another in a way that is not obtrusive or demanding.

According to one article, over one hundred websites now exist that are much like Twitter, perhaps hoping to achieve the level of popularity that Twitter boasts. One of these websites is Pownce, which was started by internet entrepreneur Kevin Rose, founder of Digg. Pownce seeks to integrate a micro-blogging platform with file sharing in order to create a more all-inclusive environment than Twitter. Because of the fact that it takes the basics of Twitter to a more advanced level of file sharing and discussion tracking, Pownce has been referred to as “Twitter on steroids” and is touted as a better alternative to Twitter in a work environment because of its superior discussion tracking capabilities. Pownce also recently launched a version of the website that is accessible to mobile phones, further increasing its accessibility in a world where internet access is accomplished more and more by those using handheld devices.

Another popular micro-blogging and social networking website is Jaiku, which was purchased by Google a year ago in October 2007. Although it is currently in a closed-beta stage, which means that it is undergoing testing and one must wait for an account to be available, it promises match the features that have already been developed in other micro-blogging platforms in a new and inventive way. Identi.ca is another micro-blogging and social networking website that allows user modification because of the fact that it is open source, making it a much more interactive experience for those who have the capability to modify and customize the platform. Spoink is similar to Pownce in that it combines many facets of social networking and multimedia in order to make a micro-blogging website that allows for podcasts, audio, video, and pictures in an easy-to-use environment.

Micro-blogging is an intriguing way to stay connected to friends and family. Not only is it easy to do, but it is actually a whole lot of fun once you get into it. Writing about what you are doing or what you plan to do is a great way to stay focused and it can also help relieve stress on those days when you feel like you have hundreds of things to do, but when you map it out you realize that there is much less to be done. Twitter is a great place to get started micro-blogging because of its ease of use and accessibility, requiring nothing much more than writing your small status updates and adding friends to your circle as you see fit. Other micro-blogging platforms like Spoink, Plurk and Pownce allow for a much more interactive experience in that the scope of what you can share is so much wider. These may be more appropriate for the workplace or another environment where you need to share more detailed information easily. All in all, though, micro-blogging is a great way to sum up your thoughts and get them out into the open.