Making the ordinary visible in microblogs

✍ Scribed by Antti Oulasvirta; Esko Lehtonen; Esko Kurvinen; Mika Raento

• Book ID: 106235370
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 641 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1617-4909
• DOI: 10.1007/s00779-009-0259-y

✦ Synopsis

Microblogging is a ''Mobile Web 2.0'' service category that enables brief blog-like postings from mobile terminals and PCs to the World Wide Web. To shed light on microblogging as a communication genre, we report on multiple analyses of data from the first 10 months of a service called Jaiku. The main finding is that microblogging centers on selective, I-centered disclosure of current activities and experiences, making daily experiences visible for others. The high frequency of brief and mundane status updates, like ''working,'' may be a second-order effect resulting from posting becoming a routine executed to keep the audience interested. The results highlight the importance of reciprocal activity and feedback in users' motivation to invest in this activity.