This talk was presented to Manchester Free Software, explaining very loosely what the differences are between various µBlogging platforms. This talk was recorded and is available at http://www.archive.org/details/Manchester.Free.Software.Jon.Spriggs

1. Introducing µ Blogging By Jon ”The Nice Guy” Spriggs jon@spriggs.org.uk http://identi.ca/jontheniceguy Identi.ca, OpenMicroBlogging, Laconica, JaikuEngine and even... Twitter!

3. I'm a Southerner.

4. This is not my day job.

5. I'm an enthusiast for all things Free & Open.

6. But most of all, I'm a GNU/ Linux nut.

8. You ”follow” or subscribe to someone's updates.

9. They become your ”follower” and subscribe to yours.

10. It's a managable chunk of information.

11. You end up with a ”life stream”.

13. On some platforms, a ”reply” is classed as an update where @SomeOne is at the beginning *.

14. On others, a ”reply” occurs wherever @SomeOne is in the text. You may also tag friends and then use the tags to address a group of friends with @#TagName.

15. You can send a private message from all platforms by prefixing your message with D PersonName.

17. The hash (#) tag is derived from use on IRC.

18. They are picked by you, but may be recommended by an event organiser for tracking purposes.

19. On some platforms, the hash tag automatically links to a list of all updates with the hash tag.

20. You have to search for updates in the public timeline with updates which have that tag.

22. The bang tag is used to address opt-in groups of people with similar interests.

23. Anyone in the group will get all the updates which contain the tag.

24. Again, the tag will link to a page of updates which contain that tag – you don't need to follow people who are in the group, it's like following the tag.

26. Some platforms just show a link to the person you're replying to and their last update before your reply.

27. Some platforms will only show the ”reply” when it's definitely in reply to an update

28. Some platforms start a conversation after every update. Replies show only on that initial update.

29. Some platforms don't appear to have been engineered to have a conversation on the system.

30. µBlog Systems Via http://leo.tumblr.com/post/108157883/the-original-twitter-via-charlie-gower

32. Laconica

33. Jaiku Engine

34. XMPP Pub-Sub

35. Facebook

37. Broadcast an RSS feed to subscribers

38. Develop communities

39. Slow, searchable, public IRC-like system

40. Announce news

41. Converse about subjects you're interested in

42. ” Back-channel” at events

44. From the client side – make sure if you're developing a microblogging application, you know about how the services work, so you can consider including them.

46. As a user – give microblogging a try – it doesn't really matter which platform you're on, just bear in mind that some platforms are more open than others

47. Any Questions?