Wisdump

Dumping wisdom on design and the web

  • Design
  • Blogging
  • Designer Resources
  • Design Critiques
  • CSS
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us

Comparing the top 4 mini-blog options

August 24, 2007 By Randa Clay 45 Comments

With the internet now clogged with multiple “mini-blogging” options making it easy to to fritter away all your time sharing everything from your random thoughts to your latest finds. Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and Tumblr are generally seen as the 4 frontrunners, and while it’s not necessarily comparing apples to apples, it’s worth a look at how they compare. (I considered throwing Facebook in here, but it’s really a different animal)

A quick overview:

twitter.png

Twitter

“what are you doing?”

The first on the scene and easily the most popular, Twitter does one thing and does it very well. You can have an instant message chat session with the world, as long as the service isn’t suffering from its all too frequent downtimes.

Pros: Everyone else is using it too. Extremely simple to use and options abound for getting messages in and out.

Cons: Lack of features. Boring design.
pownce.png

Pownce

“a way to send stuff to your friends”

Launched this summer and growing modestly with an invitation-only system, Pownce allows you to easily share messages, links, events and files with the world or just your friends. Will a nice UI, features and filtering capabilities make up for the lack of SMS and delayed API?

Pros: File sharing ability. Nice look and feel. Desktop app available.

Cons: Currently no SMS and no RSS import.

jaiku.png

Jaiku

“lifestream concept”

The combination of messaging with feed aggregation means that almost anything you do online can be combined into one stream. The addition of channels makes it easy to connect with others of similar interests, but with limited filtering capability it can be information overload.

Pros: Easily import all online activities into one place. Apply icons to posts.

Cons: No filtering. Limited SMS.

tumblr.png

Tumblr

“share anything you find”

Called the “ADHD version of blogging” by TechCrunch, Tumblr allows you to share pictures, videos, links, quotes and messages. RSS import and the ability to completely customize the look and feel or even host the tumblelog on your own domain make Tumblr a great option, but comment functionality is taking a while to materialize, which is a serious flaw these days when we’re all about interactivity.

Pros: ability to share photos, videos, etc. directly (others must link out to them). Completely customizable.

Cons: no comment functionality, though that’s apparently in the works.

Side-by-side comparison:

minblog3.png

* with external app Twitterfeed **international number only

Which one to use?

Which one(s) you prefer has a lot to do with how you want to use them and where your friends are. While Pownce and Jaiku have some nice features, Twitter and Tumblr stand out at either end of the spectrum depending on how much you want to “connect” with others. If you’re into public web-based IM, then Twitter is the place to be. It’s already the most popular, and if they would just add a couple of features it would be difficult to compete with, especially if they could address some of the downtime issues that have been plaguing the system. Tumblr is the perfect solution for people who really don’t want to have a blog per se, but want to aggregate all their online activities into one place and share what they’re finding with friends. Can’t decide? Use all of them and update them at the same time.

Which do you use most and why? Which ones do you think will still be around in 5 years, leaving the others looking like ghost towns?

(I’ve got a couple of Pownce invites left – anyone want them? Let me know in the comments.)

This article was written by Randa Clay. Read more about design, marketing, blogging, branding and all things creative at RandaClay.com.

Filed Under: Web++

Comments

  1. jkang says

    August 24, 2007 at 9:20 am

    I’d like a Pownce invite. Please send one to me. Thank a lot!

  2. Franky says

    August 24, 2007 at 9:29 am

    jkang, invite sent. :)

  3. Dommega says

    August 24, 2007 at 2:48 pm

    Thanks for the post, but I suggest make the images links, so we don’t have to type in the url in the bar. Thx.

  4. Franky says

    August 24, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    Dommega, links were being added exactly at the moment you left your comment :)

  5. Heath says

    August 25, 2007 at 8:14 am

    Pownce invite would be fantastic! Thanks

  6. Randa Clay says

    August 25, 2007 at 8:55 am

    Heath – just sent it!

  7. Brian Breslin says

    August 25, 2007 at 10:14 am

    I think you can’t really compare tumblr to the rest, as tumblr is halfway between blog and microblog. It is more flexible than the rest. The winner on the api front here is definitely twitter, jaiku’s api is very restrictive, and pownce doesnt have one yet… twitter’s biz stone said they get 10x more traffic through the api than the site itself.

  8. adang says

    August 25, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    Anymore Pownce invites? A bit late i know, but thanks.

  9. Jonathan Greene says

    August 25, 2007 at 6:37 pm

    Jaiku does not limit the sms to S60, but it is still an international number. The mobile application is S60 only…

    Also Twitter and Jaiku both offer m. sites which work great across mobile devices and I would suggest including that as a feature to compare.

  10. Jonathan Greene says

    August 25, 2007 at 6:38 pm

    Almost forgot … You can filter feeds from friends in Jaiku as well so you can choose to only get their direct jaiku posts and not lifestream data from various external sources.

  11. Randa Clay says

    August 26, 2007 at 4:18 am

    adang – invite sent!

    Jonathan – thank you for the info. I made some updates to the post and will take a look at the m. sites.

  12. Dez Blanchfield says

    August 27, 2007 at 5:46 am

    Interesting post, got me thinking about the topic, thanks!

    For my money though, I have to say that I’m really very much over the deluge of bloogy useless posts about nothing that seem to be the norm in most of the mini-blogging sites you mentioned (and others).

    I think if someone goes to the effort of actually authoring an average (i.e. 150 words or more) sized post, they make some small effort to make it worth the time they take to edit and post it.

    The new trend of just posting links or images or any other quick post crap that takes the fancy of the “mini blogger” is just filling the web up with yet more useless crap that we’re already over loaded with ;-(

    Sorry, but honestly, we can throw out the junk tabloids we get in the post box each week full of paid advertising and house listings and they are gone for good to be recylced as pulp paper, but the bloogy internet stores this crap for ever and ever and we end up with more and more of it in search engine results and the value of what we can find and read in time is increasingly diluted

    Cheers,

    Dez

  13. Franky says

    August 27, 2007 at 5:54 am

    Dez, I deleted the spam from your comment. Must have been a bot who added tons of links to your comment. ;)

  14. Randa Clay says

    August 27, 2007 at 6:29 am

    Dez, you miss the point a little in the use of these mini-blogging sites. The reason people use them is it allows them to connect with others easily, and when you find something cool, you want to share it with your friends. These sites make it easy to do that. These are not meant to be blogs in that sense, they’re meant to be conversations.

  15. elliottcable says

    August 27, 2007 at 8:18 pm

    I think you’re missing two important points.

    First, Tumblr doesn’t really fit in with the rest – it is a tumblelogging tool, not a status update tool. It needs to be held up in a conversation regarding other similar tools, of which there are none that are hosted really, not in a conversation about status update tools

    Second, for the status update tools, a *very* important factor that you fail to bring into play is ease of use. I myself use Twitter – if you look at your list, twitter fails epicly, so to speak. You can’t customize your online twitter page, you can’t set your location or bring other feeds into your tweet list, the system doesn’t really facilitate the conversation…

    What is missed is that twitter still owns the rest because of it’s ease of use. When you have options like location, icon, other feeds (jaiku); who you’re replying to (jaiku and pownce); what your web face looks like (none of them worry too much about this, thank god) – you can’t just submit “…is heading to the museum”. With twitterrific from the desktop, and SMS messages or the mobile interface to twitter, I can easily keep my status updated to whatever I am currently doing – without any barriers to me doing, such as are added by pownce or jaiku. Hell, half the time I’m typing my latest tweet while standing up, typing with one hand and tying my tie or pulling my cell out of it’s charging cradle with the other before running out the door. Twitter isn’t even really *there* – it’s just me, and my status updates, and my friends’ status updates. Any tool that gets out of your way so much that it’s invisible to you during use, is the very best tool you’re going to find.

    Forgive my choppy writing, I’ve had a crazy day d-:

  16. Randa Clay says

    August 27, 2007 at 8:43 pm

    Elliott- thanks for your interesting comments. I definitely agree that Twitter is the easiest to use- they surpass the others in that manner easily. I listed that as a Pro for Twitter.

    I have to somewhat disagree about a tool like Pownce being a “status update” tool. I think that’s what people are using it for at times because they’re used to Twittering, but that’s not the only focus or even the main focus of the site. The site is designed to allow you to “share stuff with your friends”, as they put it. It’s somewhere between Twitter and Tumblr.

    If I use Pownce to post links to articles and videos, or to post a quote I found, I’m really using it more like a Tumblelog. If I use it to just post status updates, then I’m using it like Twitter. It’s somewhere in the middle.

  17. Dane says

    August 28, 2007 at 6:15 am

    Tumblr is not recommended at all. It’s almost dead. Check their blog. The software isn’t updated for months and the creators abounded their own blog.

  18. Pop says

    August 28, 2007 at 9:20 am

    You should check out Plazes (http://www.plazes.com).

  19. John says

    August 30, 2007 at 1:33 am

    Funny how things that are compared here found it’s way in the dutch Numpa. Kind off crossover.

  20. Mobypicture says

    August 30, 2007 at 9:45 am

    Mobile and email distribution to Twitter including photos is available from Mobypicture.com… In the next weeks also distribution to Tumblr and Jaiku are added. Pownce will follow as soon as their API comes available!

    check it out at http://www.mobypicture.com

  21. Jackson says

    September 8, 2007 at 6:41 pm

    Check out http://www.justtell.us too! Brand new micro-blogging site. Actually, it’s probably more similar to Post Secret.

  22. Jase says

    September 9, 2007 at 5:32 am

    I’m afraid Tumblr does not have an SMS option as indicated in your article.

  23. Randa Clay says

    September 9, 2007 at 7:20 am

    You can SMS pictures and text in to Tumblr: see this post.

  24. blabto says

    December 18, 2007 at 8:43 am

    Believe that the microblog idea will take off. Like SMS overtaking talking, email and post etc. The microblog allows a quick conversation, smaller network of friends and the opportunity just to check out off hat.

  25. Banner Man says

    December 20, 2007 at 1:31 pm

    Nice post, but I suggest make the images links, so we don’t have to type in the website url in the bar

  26. John says

    April 14, 2008 at 7:25 am

    Missing runner up Numpa.nl here.

  27. Melanippe says

    April 15, 2008 at 11:53 am

    Hi, to update your interesting article, two news: both Tumblr and Jaiku now (April 2008) have new desktop apps: Wintumblr by Feedfeast and Jaikuroo by Rareedge (who also make Twitteroo for Twitter), all for windows. I use both and work very well.
    And in its Dashboard, Tumblr has both filtering and labels.
    HTH,
    Ippe

  28. Erik Bowman says

    August 6, 2008 at 2:58 am

    Since this article was written there has been an explosion of ‘me-to’ micro-blogging sites, I hear there are over 200. I personally have reviewed the functionality of over 30 micro-blogging sites (and continue to do research everyday).

    Most sites are limited to cloned-features of the 4 sites profiled above, very few stray too far or reach too high to improve upon them and innovate. Additional categories of features (for your next article) could include IM-to-Blog, Email-To-Blog, Toll-Free Call-to-Blog, MMS (twitter is just recently playing with adding pictures where as some sites including Spoink.com support Audio, Video, pictures and text.), and support for multi-user blog post submission.

    Of course all of the additional features I describe above are available today via http://www.spoink.com and at this time, (although it is a moving target), there are no other online services that I have found that match them.

  29. Stuart says

    August 9, 2008 at 1:09 am

    if anybody has a jaiku invite, ive been to get one for awhile!
    if so, qwerty98311@gmail.com,
    thanks in advance

  30. George Campbell says

    August 21, 2008 at 10:19 am

    I would like to give Pownce a try.
    Thanks

  31. boardtc says

    January 9, 2009 at 7:16 pm

    Pownce was closed down on December 15, 2008. The engineering team and technology are now a part of Six Apart

  32. sergio says

    October 3, 2010 at 3:56 am

    Solução completa para iniciar o seu negócio na internet ainda hoje!Segredos para transformar sua web site, Com incrível pacote de bônus, botões de pagamento mini sites gratuitos o melhor de tudo que vem com direitos de revenda inclusos!Comece agora mesmo a vender seus produtos na internet

  33. Gregory C. says

    August 14, 2011 at 5:23 am

    Great overview, I still prefer WordPress for more informative blogs, but I love Tumblr for personal blogging!

    And I am definitely starting to appreciate the new features of Posterous as well.

Trackbacks

  1. Review of the top 4 mini-blogging options at Randa Clay Design says:
    August 24, 2007 at 8:14 am

    […] got a new post up over at Wisdump about the top 4 mini-blogging options that are available, including a comparison chart to get a quick idea of what’s available. There are zillions […]

  2. Interesting websites for SEO, Web Marketing and everday work from Sante - August 25th says:
    August 25, 2007 at 6:33 pm

    […] Comparing the top 4 mini-blog options – With the internet now clogged with multiple ?mini-blogging? options making it easy to to fritter away all your time sharing everything from your random thoughts to your latest finds. Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Tumblr are generally seen as the 4 frontrunn […]

  3. links for 2007-08-27 — EXCELER8ion | People ARE The Social Media says:
    August 27, 2007 at 11:21 am

    […] Comparing the top 4 mini-blog options Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and Tumblr are generally seen as the 4 frontrunners, and while it’s not necessarily comparing apples to apples, it’s worth a look at how they compare. (I considered throwing Facebook in here, but it’s really a different animal (tags: microblogging twitter jaiku pownce tumblr lifestreaming lifestream microblog Web2.0) […]

  4. Microblogging: is klein het nieuwe groot? | Recruitingfacts.nl says:
    August 28, 2007 at 11:26 am

    […] los van deze ironie is micro-blogging een fenomeen om rekening mee te houden. In een heel aardig artikel wordt een vergelijking gemaakt tussen 4 micro-blogging tools: Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku en […]

  5. Micro-blogging with Jaiku says:
    August 28, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    […] Here is another good post comparing mini blogging solutions […]

  6. Do What You Love, Love What You Do | Design Adaptations says:
    September 5, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    […] of blogs and still manages to raise three children! Randa has been an interviewee and done some guest posting as well. Daniel just reached a milestone of 5000 subscribers in under a year! If these examples […]

  7. What you need to know before taking a blogging job at Randa Clay Design says:
    September 17, 2007 at 1:41 pm

    […] the research you do for a post on one blog can provide good content for another. For example, I surveyed the top 4 mini-blogging tools at Wisdump, and then continued the discussion here with more of a personal opinion post. It was a great way to […]

  8. Analisi di 4 servizi di Microblogging su ExtremeTech - Microblogging says:
    October 4, 2007 at 1:32 am

    […] passato avevo letto un confronto interessante, con Tumblr come “quarto incomodo”,  su […]

  9. HR Horizons HR Blog » Blog Archive » links for 2007-11-13 says:
    November 14, 2007 at 7:35 am

    […] Comparing the top 4 mini-blog options Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and Tumblr are generally seen as the 4 frontrunners, and while it’s not necessarily comparing apples to apples, it’s worth a look at how they compare. (I considered throwing Facebook in here, but it’s really a different animal […]

  10. Microblogging: is klein het nieuwe groot? | Recruitment Matters says:
    November 19, 2007 at 6:26 am

    […] los van deze ironie is micro-blogging een fenomeen om rekening mee te houden. In een heel aardig artikel wordt een vergelijking gemaakt tussen 4 micro-blogging tools: Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku en […]

  11. Hang on, new blog? « Beak says:
    December 9, 2008 at 7:35 am

    […] to blog frequently, but with relatively short posts. The “ADHD version of blogging”[1], I found the internal interface really easy to use, and rather innovative, having seven buttons to […]

  12. Hang on, new blog? « digressive_deviations says:
    December 15, 2008 at 1:58 am

    […] to blog frequently, but with relatively short posts. The “ADHD version of blogging”[1], I found the internal interface really easy to use, and rather innovative, having seven buttons to […]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Categories

Web Design Tools You Wish You Knew About When First Designing Your Website

Web Design Tools You Wish You Knew About When First Designing Your Website

It’s easy to have perfect vision in hindsight, but when designing a website a little planning ahead can give you a perfect vision from the get-go. Many web designers find themselves performing redundant tasks, or creating things with manual effort that could otherwise be automated. Check out these useful web design tools that you’ll be […]

Best Resources to Use for Web Design Ideas

Best Resources to Use for Web Design Ideas

Web designers may have their own ideas when creating a layout design for a website but similar to writers, they also experience the so-called mental block syndrome at certain times. Fortunately, the web has a wealth of information available and designers can always turn to it for inspiration. It may surprise you to know that […]

The “Horrible Web Design Client:” An Infographic Look

The “Horrible Web Design Client:” An Infographic Look

Web design is a new frontier in creative designing. It takes a special set of design skills to make an effective web site. A good web site is not just pretty to look at, or filled with a lot of cool Flash animations, it is also easily navigable, with well laid out elements that are […]

Pagelines PlatformPro 1.3 – The Upgrade

Pagelines PlatformPro 1.3 – The Upgrade

PlatformPro 1.3, the latest upgraded version of the successful PlatformPro Theme by PageLines, has finally hit the market. Packed with 20 or so new options and features, it has undergone some major changes; the most important of which are listed here: The new Web Typography tool provides direct integration with Google’s Font API. This provides […]

Design tip: use extraordinary imagery

Design tip: use extraordinary imagery

Drawn.ca has posted 2 interesting sources of atypical imagery which, I realized, can be great design inspiration: First, Dogfoose uses close-up images of produce in his illustrations. The sample below uses broccoli as treetops for a kids magazine illustration: What an amusing way to channel the miniature look (achieved through tilt-shift photography) for infographics purposes! […]

iThemes Builder – Your one-stop WordPress Theme Builder

iThemes Builder – Your one-stop WordPress Theme Builder

This revolutionary new theme is incredibly easy to install – simply upload it into the themes folder, click activate – that’s it! As with all their themes, iThemes have included a My Themes widget, providing links to special features within the theme itself, as well as relevant information for the configuration of WordPress. The layout […]

Copyright © 2019 Wisdump · Log in