Taming the Microblogging clutter

In the movie Back to the Future, the future Marty McFly loses his job and printouts of “YOU’RE FIRED” start popping up in all sorts of places around the house. One of these is seen by his wife from the past and acts as a prop later on in the movie. Maybe it was the movie’s way of foretelling the microblogging scene of today where there are so many ways to convey your message that somebody is bound to notice.

I recently got a Twitter account and signed up for Jaiku (heard it is better than Twitter, but am still waiting for an account). Through the various instant messaging networks, we have been communicating a lot of thoughts through custom status messages and nicknames. Facebook’s status updates, another form of microblogging, have really caught on as well, even with those who detest traditional blogging.

Though the frequency of my blogging has gone down noticeably, I usually post at least 1 update a day via one of the above methods. It’s just so easy to do so. A simple status update via the GTalk or Facebook applications for Blackberry, or even an SMS to Twitter, will do it. With so much happening, what is required is a way to consolidate all these updates and make it simpler to keep track of what we are publishing as well as what others are writing.

This is where services such as Friendfeed (and Facebook to an extent) come in. These can be configured to display various updates in a single place and can really help to organize the clutter. I recently signed up with FriendFeed and am really liking it. It even allowed me to put a sidebar on this blog which displays mini-updates from my Twitter page and GTalk status.

The next step in the microblogging evolution should be the ability to update all the competing services through a single action. That would really make it easier to disseminate information and would be especially useful in case of emergencies (something all too common these days).