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Source:Mashable!

Last week, it was very clear to most of us not in line for the iPhone that the most exciting aspect of the iPhone 3G release were the GPS capabilities.  We haven’t seen more announcements for locationally aware social networks come across our newsbox here at Mashable (or anything that takes advantage of GPS technology) before or since.

One such network is one called Whrrl.  It’s not particular to the iPhone, but it is one location aware socnet that’s been getting a fair amount of buzz lately. Kristen initially reviewed it here at Mashable, describing it as “Yelp Plus Twitter.”

The topic that Sean and I grapple with today on Mashable Conversations is exactly why it is you’d want the whole world knowing exactly where you are at any given point.  Aside from just wanting to have a little anonymity, it seemed to us that we’d occasionally want to slip down to the bar without the wife knowing.  Or perhaps go with our friends to a batchelor party while still being eligible to run for public office a decade later.

The internet has a long memory (at least a year long).  We’re already responsible for every errant word spoken ont he net.  Would you like to also be responsible for everywhere you’ve ever been?

We explore this a bit further in the show, and then are joined by the folks from Whrrl at Seattle SummerMash, as they tell us a bit more about the service.

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—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Whrrl is Yelp Plus TwitterCoupon Alerts As You Shop OnlinePlacesToDo Takes Social Bookmarking MobileIs Ad Infuse Too Creepy for Mobile Advertising?Yahoo Invites More Developers to Use Location-Based Platform, Fire EagleGeoTwitterous: Personalized Twitter on a MapEveryScape Takes Virtual City Tours to the Next Level

Source:Mashable!

Blogging for all intents and purposes has been around for about the ten year mark. During that time it has gone through many changes as more platforms and tools became available that made it easier and easier for just about anyone to become a blogger. Styles of blogs have grown as well with everything from the original personal weblog style right through to today’s political blogs, tech blogs, and one of the hottest niches around – mommy blogging.

Through all this though, there have been those who have wanted to make blogging even easier and as such we see things like tumblr and now a new one called posterous, which allows you to email your thoughts to the service and they get posted automatically. Then amongst all this we have the arrival of things like Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku, which strove to lower the bar even further by making everything we typed into their character limited text boxes a new form of blogging. This new form was quickly named micro-blogging and without any real questioning it became the defacto term for all those millions of tweets flying around the Internet like annoying little gnats.

It amazes me how anyone in all seriousness can even consider the inane twaddle that permeates the Internet from services like Twitter as even coming close to blogging or micro-blogging. Has anyone really paid attention to what is being said on Twitter these days – that is if you can make it through the growing amount of spam that is occurring. Sure micro-blogging is a valid term when used to describe things like tumblr or posterous but not when used to describe Twitter.

If anything, as a blogger I find it insulting that Twitter is even considered to be in the same field as blogs or even micro-blogs. The idea that someone can send a 140 character twitpitch or let the world know where about in some city street they are is considered to be blogging is stupid and devalues the hard work that most bloggers do everyday.

I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a place for Twitter. On the contrary it serves a good use in keeping you in contact with friends, but that isn’t blogging. The fact is that Twitter is no different than another service that we have had for a very long time on the Web and it’s called Internet Messenger or Gtalk or any number of messenger type services. There is nothing wrong with admitting that Twitter is just another form of IM but trying to make it more important than it is by equating it to blogging in any form is wrong.

Twitter is not blogging. It is not even micro-blogging. It is just another glorified messenger service with a fancy Fail Whale graphic for when it decides that it can’t even be a messenger service.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Remember The Milk with TwitterSeesmic Acquires Twhirl, for Desktop Video MicrobloggingTwitter Increasing Server Capacity In Runup To SXSWThingfo: Creating Communities Around Twitter Things?Geezeo Adds Confessions: What Did You Blow Your Paycheck On?Rummble Sneak Peek: Location-Based Networking Done Right?Twitter Uses Tumblr For Status Blog

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 12:02 am and is filed under search, web 2.0, blogging, web, social software, twitter, Web2.0 Startups, chat, Opinion, microblogging, messenger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.