Sunday, June 7, 2009

Will Twitter swallow the blogging fraternity?

Many years ago there came a buzz on the internet in the form of blogging. A lot many people who had the little knowledge of Typing and Emailing became online publishers aka bloggers. They created their own Web url and expressed their views on their site.

By having a blog (Web log) you have a worldwide identity and it is available for free. The kick in this hobby is that you get back bouquets & brickbats in terms of comments to your articles from the readers of your blog site. These comments spice up for the intended networking on the internet.

Some bloggers got to monetize their blog with Ads and many “get rich quick” sort of stories cropped up. Though on the other side, more than 95% of them have still been stumbling to realize any money out of their blogs.

The downside is that, bloggers some times run out of inspiration and get stumbled with writer's block. For some of them, this online hobby took away their precious time since it required extensive research before sitting down to write an informative article.

Why not you publish a short and crispy post?
The fitting reply to this Q, came in the form of Twitter.com which snuffed off the stumbling blocks involved in writing out those longer posts. Make it short, make it sweet. How about typing out your thoughts in less than 140 characters. This has been called the micro blogging or tweeting.

Twitter ~~ What is it?
As Wikipedia tells...
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Since the tweets are shorter the micro bloggers aka tweeters were publishing out their posts too often as well as enjoy the fun of subscribing to the updates of their friends. But, at the same time this is taking toll on blogging. Many good bloggers who started to tweet became less involved in churning out any better articles in their blogs. So, is this new concept of micro blogging a blessing or a curse?

Yes, let us discuss



A one day unconference event to bring people together to talk about how to share information in 140 characters is happening at Chennai. The unconference was named buzz140.

When : On Sunday the 21st June 2009 between 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Where : Photon Infotech Private Ltd. Location : No. 2/102, Photon Towers, Old Mahabalipuram Road, Karapakkam,Chennai.

More about the event is here
Directions to the venue is here and here

Participation is absolutely free, though you may not bother to spend US $ 1 towards your lunch expenses.

Oh, did I miss to inform you of my micro blog?
Here it is : www.twitter.com/srinidotme

Catch you at the event.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Srini,

Can you tell me how to reach to the venue? I am coming first time to chennai to attend this event. I have checked in the google and some sites, but did not found the right way to reach over there.

The nearest bus stop as per google map shows Thoraapakaam PTC Colony. But I am not sure whether any other bus stop is even closer to that.

I have tried to find to reach toraapakkam bus stop but as per google map it looks like that it is atleast 8 kilometers from thorapakkam bus stop.

And If I will come from train, then, tiruvanmayur or taramani station can be the choice but again those are also atleast 8-9 kilometers far from the venue.

I did not found any bus details or train details beteeen (tiruvanmayur, taramani or thorapakkam) to the venue. Can you guide me in this regards.

Srini said...

@ Apurva
Now the wiki has been updated with the directions to the venue. Thanks for highlighting it

As well pasting it here for your reference..

Photon Infotech is close to Arvind Theatre. Ask for the theatre name or Karapakkam bus stop. There are a lot of share autos and any share auto guy would know the name 'Arvind Theatre' There are plenty of buses in this route (OMR), the common one being T51 which plies from Thiruvanmiyur to Tambaram East and 19B from Saidapet/TNagar to Kelambakkam. By Bus/Share auto, it takes about 20 min from Tidel park, 25 min from Thiruvanmiyur (give or take, considering average traffic)

Meet you there at the event...