Micro Blogging is a fairly new social communication tool that is quickly evolving into a primary form of communication. The Associated Press recently referred to Twitter “as the news outlet for the 21st century”. It is no fad and if you are not on Twitter or other hubs like the ones listed below, you will be soon.
When there were the recent protest in Iran, before we were all consumed with the death of Michael Jackson and forgot that there were people getting killed in the streets of Tehran, it was through Twitter that most of the information and video links were getting out to the rest of the world, even as the government tried to suppress information from getting out.
The Micro-Blogging Fab 5
Most people have heard of Twitter and the little blue bird continues to dominate the micro-blogging universe with growth in excess of 1,164% over the last year. There is no other micro-blogging hubs that offer the massive traffic and link potential that Twitter currently does. Matter of fact, a number of micro blog hubs lost traffic over the last year becuase of the dominance and popularity of Twitter. That will change though in the near future.
As Twitter works to find a monetization model to generate revenues and people start looking for alternatives becuase of the constant overloading of the Twitter network we can expect to see one or two creative hubs to begin to pick up more traffic and users. A number of upstart free micro-blogging hubs offer a variety of unique looks, features and tools that may be helpful in your business, life or leisure.
Here are the Fab 5 Micro Blogs as of July 2009 as listed by www.compete.com and www.alexa.com.
#1 Twitter – http://www.twitter.com
Unique Visitors: 22,997,148 Monthly Change: +16.57% Yearly Change: +1,164.11%
Alexa Traffic Rank: 26
Twitter, which was created in July 2006 by Jack Dorsey, is a free social networking and micro-blogging hub that enables its users “Twitterer’s” to send and read each others’ real time updates, known as “tweets”. Tweets are text posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to other who have choosen to “Follow” your tweets.
Click to Follow me on Twitter
#2 Tumblr – http://www.tumblr.com
Unique Visitors: 2,590,440 Monthly Change: +6.97% Yearly Change: +251.62%
Alexa Traffic Rank: 646
Tumblr is short-form blog that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, which is the short form comparable to a Twitter “tweet”.
Tumblr is the closest competitor to
Twitter with almost 2.6 million unique visitors and traffic growth over 251% over the last year.#3 FreindFeed – http://www.friendfeed.com
Unique Visitors: 1,107,160 Monthly Change: -0.26% Yearly Change: +149.80%
Alexa Traffic Rank: 985
FriendFeed a real time aggregator that combines the best of instant messaging and microblogging. It consolidates the updates from social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging, social media and social networking websites.
The goal of FriendFeed according to their website is to make content on the Web more relevant and useful for you by using your existing social network as a tool for discovering interesting information. Users can be an individual, business or organization.
#4 Plurk – http://www.plurk.com
Unique Visitors: 254,327 Monthly Change: -11.48% Yearly Change: +22.68%
Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,956
Plurk is free micro-blogging hub that shows up as a time line. Updates are then shown on the user’s home page using a timeline which lists all the updates received in chronological order, and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Users can respond to other users’ updates from their timeline through the Plurk.com website, by instant messaging, or by text messaging.
One feature that Plurk has that Twitter does not offer is the ability to generate link energy back to your primary website, so look for Plurk to get stronger in 2009 as it gains more views.
#5 Yammer – http://www.yammer.com
Unique Visitors: 95,296 Monthly Change: +37.74% Yearly Change: +21,411.51%
Alexa Traffic Rank: 64,419
Yammer was just launched in September 2008 and is an excellent micro-blogging tool for businesses and organizations. Co-workers using Yammer frequently exchange short answers to one simple question “what are you working on”. Through Yammer co-workers can discuss ideas, ask questions, post news, and share links and related information.
Yammer focuses on businesses, and only individuals with the same email domain can join a given network. This is a great way to develop a unique network for your team.
Final Thoughts
Ok, so that is the Bssential Solutions Micro-Blogging Fab 5 for 2009. I expect over the next year to see Twitter move into the Top 10 in overall site traffic and two other micro-blogging sites to enter the top 100. The funny thing is that as fast as these new hubs grow and generate link energy, it may be a social hub that does not even exist yet!
Action Item
Check out these micro-blogging hubs and register for at least three of them, including Twitter. If you have a business with employees or are starting a new organization I would suggest that you set up an account with Yammer and then have some fun with one of the other social hubs i have listed.
Let me know which one is your favorite micro-blogging hub or if there are others you like to logon to.
Bill Sifflard - With over thirty years experience as an entrepreneur, an executive, an author and as a business consultant, Bill Sifflard has a long history of experience bringing innovation, efficiency and success to large and small businesses adapting to evolving markets.
As a premiere Sales and Marketing Innovator, Bill is changing how business integrates traditional marketing strategy with the power and potential of the internet utilizing his "Velocity for Success" matrix.
To learn more about Bill and Bssential Small Business Solutions you can visit http://www.bssentials.com and register for his Free eNewsletter or follow all of his blog posts by clicking on the RSS feed button above. 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
New micro blogging sites are the way of the future, moreso the present. I have my internal SEO team working on them all the time, actually being a part of the community, not a spammer… and I think that learning how to utilize them that way will be more beneficial than just spamming 5 different micro blog sites… but that is just my idea of good business…
what do you think? think its worth it to spam with things like tweetlater available, I can now spam whatever i want, without even touching my computer!
I know I am not in favor of spamming. I do believe that there are some great tools like TweetLater that you can use to pass along articles, marketing links, posts etc on your Twitter site and plan how and when you might want to share information in advance. That is not spamming as people choose to follow you or not. It is when they send out 20 automated tweets every hour that are all trying to sell you something that they get the boot from me. Is there a name for that? Maybe we should call it Twamming! Thanks for your input!
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