140Char

In a slightly odd pairing, political eco figure Al Gore and successful professional blogger Darren Rowse both had microblogging news to unveil while I was off on vacation. And the less significant part for me personally, is that Al Gore has his own Twitter account.

More significant was the news that the man behind Problogger and one of four behind the B5media network, has launched TwiTip, a new blog dedicated to Twitter Tips.

Uh-oh.

Darren’s being pretty open about the process and techniques he’s using for the new blog, but the fact he’s already seeing up to 2000 users per day, and has over 1300 RSS subscribers within a few days due to his previous success and fame could be a bit depressing! I have to admit being tempted by Web 1.0 Darkside thinking a little.

Web 1.0: ‘Well, the game is over now. Him and another couple of A-listers will just hoover up the entire audience.’

Web 2.0: ‘Every new blog/person is a good thing for attracting and engaging more people and providing new perspectives.’

Web 1.0: ‘But he’s got a larger audience in a week than 140char has after 6 months.’

Web 2.0: ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s just a reason to ensure I work harder on making this place different and valuable enough that it succeeds in it’s own right and stands out – and maybe Darren will send some traffic by!’

At the end of the day, I wish Darren all the success he’ll doubtless get, and it hasn’t changed my thoughts on the future state of the site too much – initially it looks like he’s continue his tactic of providing great tuitional and instructive guides etc, which will be just as useful to me as other people – and I was already intending to take this blog in a slightly different direction anyway. Especially as I like to play and break new apps and sites, rather than feeling like I’m writing a game guide.

The only thing that does disapoint me a little is the fact Darren is publicly asking for submissions for Twitips and has already received loads of content, which is doubtless coming from Problogger readers who see a chance to get more coverage for their own websites and blogs – it might have been nice to have seen some recognition of the sites already here like Microblink, Twitterapps,  Twitterholics, Twittermaven, etc.

And obviously if anyone, A-list or otherwise, fancies being involved in a site dedicated to microblogging, you’re always welcome to get involved here!