rElearn

Microblogs, like Jaiku and twitter, are a speeded-up, stripped down version of blogging. Because they happen faster and contain less information you can consume more. Because you can handle more you can interact more. But it’s still slow enough that you won’t get burnt out as fast as you would in a regular IM chatroom.

Under the hood microblogs are built on classic web technology. It’s asynchronous http and html-based stuff. You can shrink it onto phones, thread it through feed-readers or, of course, do it through your plain old web browser. One of the web’s basic building blocks is the hyper-link. If you want to understand web 2.0, for instance, find out about pageRank, it’s a great example of how web 2.0 works and its built on hyper-links.

At the moment you type your raw url into jaiku/twitter and behind the scenes it constructs the link for you. Its messy because you can’t say “click here”. You have to leave all the plumbing and wiring of your links hanging out. Can microblogs crack this nut and is it important to do so? I think it may be. I think microblogs need to tell us more. They should allow us to make money from affiliate programs. That link I just made points to Amazon’s affiliate program (and you guessed I’m affiliated with those two links!).

Microblogging is perfect for affiliation because its social, its peer-operated and there’s trust (or social anxiety if you want to be glass half empty about it). It has all these things in a way blogging doesn’t (because its faster and easier to consume). It’s for selling the dream. We need more powerful microblogging links. Let us sell it.