It’s a constant new feature race between Tumblr and Posterous at the moment. As fast as one reveals a new feature, the other reveals something else equally interesting.

And now Tumblr has revealed an official BlackBerry application to let you post text,photos, video, audio and links. It was developed by Mobelux, who also did the Tumblr iPhone app. Apparently BlackBerry Storm 2 owners might experience some issues, but there’s already a workaround.

It does just about everything, including letting you send images and video from your library, or record new video directly from the app itself.

Microblogging has always fitted mobile devices perfectly, whether it’s Twitter, Tumblr or Posterous, and the expanding range of applications which simplify the process of adding more to your content will only improve matters. There’s actually already a Wordpress app for BlackBerry, but I’m not sure I’d want to type a typical entry of mine on a touchscreen or smart phone keyboard. But allow me to fuel a microblogging with link posts, short entries, videos and pictures, and that’s the perfect mobile form of expression.

Tumblr are hosting the app download as a direct link.

I’m a big fan of both Tumblr and Posterous, despite not really having the time/project to make the best use of them at the moment. So the fact that Tumblr has released a new feature, some interesting statistics and signs of new revenue streams launching soon has reignited my thoughts on how I could use the service effectively.

The new feature is the ability to add static pages – which will aid companies and bloggers looking to keep content highlighted. Adding a page is simple, with three layouts to choose from.

And it will only build on some pretty impressive statistics released today – 1 billion page views in February 2010 for starters. It also has 2 million posts every day, 15,000 new posts daily, and 18 new posts and reblogs every second.

Incidentally, 1 billion page views in February equals 36 million page views per day, 25,000 page views per minute, or 400 per second. And Tumblr has put together a nice infographic to show off the info:

And if that isn’t enough, apparently there are also plans to unveil two new revenue generating features next month, powered by the widget mysteriously pictured below:

For a personal or simple company blog, I’d definitely recommend checking out Tumblr or Posterous. They’re easier to update than a traditional hosted blog platform (whether Blogger or Wordpress), and offer as many design options etc. Ultimately a full self-hosted blog platform such as Wordpress (Which this site uses) offers some additional advantages, but if you don’t want the hassle or advertising, then go with the microblogging platforms.

The Shorty Awards are held annually, with nominations and votes submitted by anyone via Twitter, combined with voting by the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences. Twitter client Tweetdeck was one of the 26 category winners announced last week.

The Shorty Awards

Tweetdeck won the Apps category ahead of Hoosuite, Mr Unfollowers, ColourLovers, MailChimp and AggreTweet. Other winners included @BettyDraper, @WholeFoods, and @NathanFillion.  You can see the full list of winners on the Shorty Awards website.

A guest post by Lauren Fisher, who specialises in online PR and social media at Simply Zesty – and can be found on Twitter at @laurenfisher.
As we look forward to a brand new year, I’m sure the burning question on everyone’s lips is – what’s going to happen to microblogging in 2010? In a year that saw Ashton Kutcher reach 1 million followers on Twitter and MSN launch their own microblogging service (and MSN China clone Plurk – Dan), the next year certainly has a lot to live up to. Here, I offer a few of my own predictions for microblogging in 2010, with Dan’s thoughts below.

Increased use in organisations

I’m talking here about internal use of microblogging, as a way for colleagues to collaborate and communicate with each other. We’ve seen Google Wave emerge as a tool for professional, organisational use and I think this is the path that microblogging will take in 2010. I’ve already written on here about my thoughts on Yammer (which I still stand by) and I think we will see microblogging tools play a bigger role in internal corporate communications, as an easy and efficient way to communicate with each other. The benefits of realtime will be no more paramount than for businesses.

Dan: Totally agree, although I’m not sure I’d pick Yammer out as the key product in this area – the move is towards integrating microblogging as part of a collaborative and project management toolset – e.g. Salesforce Chatter. The novelty of an ‘internal Twitter’ is fine, but doesn’t convert those who don’t like Twitter, or those happy to DM via Twitter already. Integrated tools give reasons for people to get involved.

Twitter Declining

I won’t be the first, or last, person to say this but I think Twitter may have reached its height of popularity and I think numbers will start to dwindle, albeit slowly. The love affair with Twitter has been exciting, but it might just be over. The avalanche of spam accounts has a part to play here, but I think that when Twitter reaches its highest point of saturation, is conversely when you start to lose value in the site. It has become incredibly noisy and I am beginning to question the real use of it.

Dan: I agree to some extent. I think some of the expansion already has been down to a huge number of spam accounts, and it’s something Twitter has started to tackle, but will always be a huge problem. The lesson here is to learn from the most popular 3rd party apps – Tweetdeck and Seesmic for example, which allow far better filtering than Twitter itself. The noise levels don’t bother me too much because I’m fairly selective about who I follow (Hard to believe when I’m following almost 2k people!)

Microblogging as customer service

I think that more and more companies will embrace microblogging in 2010, beyond the extent we’re seeing now. Businesses will realise the potential of microblogging as a customer service platform though, rather than a place for sexy social media campaigns. I don’t think there will be many more hashtag competitions, we’ve had pretty much every variation of these! I hope that more companies will realise the value of microblogging to source and, most importantly, solve issues for customers. As consumers, we are expecting everything to be solved in real-time and this is what we’ll expect businesses to cater to. The power of crowdsourcing will also be recognised more and we’ll see more companies opening up product development to the masses.

Dan: Totally agree that almost every company should be using Twitter as an integral part of overall improvements to customer service. I expect to reach any tech company via Twitter, and those that do have an active role tend to respond quickly and get my repeat business!

No to video microblogging

It’s not an area that’s really taken off and I don’t think 2010 will be the year for video microblogging. Some sites have made a good attempt, such as Vidly, but once the initial shine wears off the uptake is slow. I simply don’t think that microblogging lends itself to video. A quick text update is one thing : shooting, uploading and tagging a short video is another. We’re still not as comfortable in front of the camera as we are in front of the keyboard and I don’t think this will change any time soon.

Dan: Damn it – this is an area that comes back to haunt me after I made a prediction on video at a conference that Seesmic’s original video blogging platform would take off in 2009. And I was wrong for exactly the reasons above. I’d say for the over 20s, audio blogging such as Audioboo is more accessible. However, I think there’s a huge group of teenagers who are very accustomed to broadcasting themselves on Justin.tv and Ustream. If someone taps into that market and can lure them away from sites which are heavily integrating with Facebook, Twitter etc, then we may see video microblogging take off in a couple of years. It’s also likely to be primarily mobile, and the odds are people will still video other people rather than themselves…

Location –based microblogging

If Twitter is to continue growing in 2010, I think the answer could be in location-based services. As mobile internet usage rapidly increases, we’re all going to be using location services more. If we can make real connections on Twitter with those that are physically close to us, as a more integrated part of the whole microblogging experience, this could prove incredibly popular. Integrating tweets at real-world events such as concerts and sport events will also become more popular, bringing people physically together.

Dan: Totally. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more integration between location, microblogging and special offers, but that’s definitely going to arrive this year – look at mobile social location games like Foursquare, or Google stepping up their location-based efforts. And events are a huge influence on bringing people together on Twitter – the FA Cup, the Superbowl, Eurovision etc as examples…

Integration with sites

As more people will be moving away from Twitter itself, I think microblogging will play a bigger part in existing sites. The new redesign of LinkedIn sees the now familiar stream of status updates with more prominence and I think this is probably the way many sites will go, including email services, encouraging even further interaction between people through short updates. As we become increasingly productive online in 2010, we’ll expect the microblogging functionality to feature more heavily in sites we’re already visiting, than having to go to a separate site.

Dan: Twitter, Facebook and Google are the three services that you should expect to seemlessly be integrated into almost every site you visit in the next 6 months. Each one is becoming very close to the single unified ID many people have talked about…

Microblogging in 2010 – what do you think?

This is the first post by new contributor Lauren Fisher, who specialises in online PR and social media at Simply Zesty – and can be found on Twitter at @laurenfisher.

Back in December 2008, Six Apart acquired Pownce and promptly shut it down. Now we can see whether that was a wise move, as Six Apart has launched TypePad Motion, a microblogging service ‘evolved from the Pownce codebase and community’.

It’s written in Python using the Django framework, and the idea is that it’s easy to build and customise, allowing developers to use Typepad for the ‘heavy lifting’, with a flexible and separate layer for creating the design etc.

It allows members to share notes, files, photos , video and audio, and celebrity Typepad users have already integrated the system – examples include Zachary Quinto and Ryan Star if you want to take a look. Content can be cross-posted to both Facebook and Twitter, as you’ve probably come to expect by now!

It’s part of Typepad’s move into proving a cloud service to build social applications, including opening up Typepad’s API’s and providing a TypePad Developer Program for a free beta version of the Typepad API.

While it’s nice to finally see the acquisition of Pownce turn into something meaningful, and also interesting to see where the future lies for Six Apart, the cloud platform and opportunities for developers are actually far more interesting for most people than TypePad Motion. Unless you’re a celebrity, you’re not necessarily going to be getting much conversation generated on a regular basis on your site when compared to using a general community like Twitter etc. And I’m not sure the functionality is enough to make people switch to a paid TypePad account from Blogger or Wordpress.

And there’s been ways to self-host your own microblogging platform for a while – Laconica has now become StatusNet, but remains an open-source microblogging server.

What Six Apart’s move really means is a move more towards the cloud service provider space – the likes of cloud storage providers etc, rather than a move into microblogging.

I’m determined to get back into covering non-Twitter news, so here’s the latest on Posterous, which now lets anyone customise their microblog/lifestreaming/’blogging lite’ site with themes or custom HTML and CSS.

Until now it’s been one of the big differences between it and rival Tumblr – hence why Posterous also allows you to drag and drop your Tumblr theme into Posterous. This will make it easier for anyone considering the switch.

Personally I definitely prefer using Posterous due to the ease with which I can upload everything I want via email – and I already use it to autopost to Tumblr.

Here’s the handy site guide to themes:

The one thing I haven’t seen tried anywhere else, and that I’m keen to experiment with, is whether using custom HTML will allow advertising into the platform – it isn’t something I’d stumbled across on any Tumblr/Posterous sites yet, and given that it’s about the only reason I can find for picking Google’s Blogger over Wordpress as a hosted service, it could be a major feature for either of the two lifestreaming sites.

A couple of interesting posts have highlighted both the positive and negative of the increase in customer service by brands on Twitter.

Andrew Grill has written a detailed account of his dealings with British Telecom in a post titled ‘Why call centres need to embrace Twitter and IM for customer support’. In it, he details a familiar bad experience with an endless chain of Interactive Voice Response systems and staff.

In the midst of it he contacted @BTCare who directed him to the helpline, but the eventual solution came from the section of BT.com which offers an interactive chat service with an advisor.

Meanwhile Dave Winer writes ‘Sorry I still hate Comcast’ – critical of the company which has received plaudits for using Twitter effectively to reach out as a customer service tool – in Dave’s case they couldn’t stop him getting ‘fired as a Comcast customer’ and offended him even more by telling him that they liked him during the process. Which is why Dave now prefers to avoid being cut off or dealing with Twitter reps for his AT&T account.

I’m not sure it’s about the tools being used, or even the amount of resource directed to each one (Andrew suggests that the 7 people he spoke to via the phone would have been better served monitoring places like Twitter etc).

I’m fairly sure it’s about customer service people being helpful and having the authority to solve problems etc proactively, whether that’s via the phone or Twitter.

It’s important to be in the place customers want to reach you, and equally important in the modern internet age to be monitoring for those people who might have a problem that they announce to others without contacting you directly.

But being aware of a customer’s problem doesn’t solve it.

I’ve had good experiences with some companies via Twitter – for example the chap who was running www.twitter.com/godaddyguy was incredibly helpful when I had hosting problems. He chased for answers, emailed, and even offered to call to ensure the problem was resolved – and all this was in the same time as it took to get a cursory email response via their online help service.

Partly, Twitter is a great tool for customer service, because it’s easy for companies to monitor, and quick for customers to use to share information, praise and complaints.

But partly, I think, the most proactive customer service people are eager and excited by using new technologies like Twitter, so you’ll tend to find more helpful people on there than in the call centre hiring whoever they can at the most cost-efficient wage.

I think we’re a long way from Twitter, Get Satisfaction etc replacing call centres – but I can’t wait for the day they do because it will enable everyone to highlight the proactive, useful, customer service staff from the bad far more easily, and mean that everyone gets a better service no matter who they’re dealing with.

I’d be surprised if you’ve avoided mention of Techcrunch’s TC50, but if so, it’s one of the biggest conferences and events of the tech year, with startups able to pitch for a cash prize, investors, and the like’s of Kevin Rose in attendance.

Although the Techcrunch interview mainly focuses on Digg, they do ask whether or not starting Pownce was a mistake – skip to 7.26 if you just want the microblogging:

Posterous straddles the bridge between microblogging and lifestreaming, and although founder Sachin Agarwal definitely prefers the latter description, I’m guessing it’s of interest to you – both as a place to post and aggregate content, but also as a method for sending content out to other sites, such as Twitter.

In any case, it’s first iPhone application is now available, and PicPosterous provides an alternative to emailing all your updates.

You can send content, particularly images and videos, before you’ve registered for an account, which will mean one is automatically created for you, and visual content can also be added to an album without starting a new post.

You can’t forward links or plain text to the site, which is potentially frustrating, and another niggle is that you don’t have any control over your autoposting settings via the app, besides turning them on or off.

But, as always with Posterous, the focus is on keeping things incredibly quick and simple, and then building on that, so I’m sure the feature list will improve fairly quickly over time.

Once upon a time, there were three prominent microblogging platforms, Twitter, Plurk and Jaiku. One became incredibly popular, one introduced a side-on view, and one was acquired and then released by the Google Fairy Godmother.

Others fell by the wayside, including Pownce, and Rejaw.

But how do they compare now, after the mainstream adoption of Twitter:

Obviously this doesn’t tell the complete story, as it tracks web visits only, but it’s safe to assume it’s proportionally correct. Twitter’s close to 25 million Unique Visitors, Plurk is holding steady between 250,000-300,000 for the past year, and Jaiku has dropped from 70,000 down to 30-40,000 for the last two months measured.

In fact, it’s not even winning the Open Source Microblogging Platform war – as Identi.ca has grown slightly while Jaiku declined.

Meanwhile, Google has listed the 46 official accounts it has on Twitter.

And in the meantime, we’ve seen the rise of Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck, internal microblogging such as Yammer,  the blend of micro and macro blogging in Tumblr and Posterous, and video and audio blogging with the likes of 12 seconds and Audioboo. Not forgetting the lifestreaming element of the likes of Friendfeed.

And although we talk about forums, blogs and Web 2.0 social networks as if they’ve reached the endpoint of their evolution, there’s still a lot more to come from them – I’d say the social elements of the web aren’t even 15% of what they’ll become in the next 10 years.

The question is how you as a person, you as a company, or you as a developer can find clarity through it all…

(There is also the question fo what Google were thinking re: Jaiku, and how it’s managing to miss out on the rise of Open Source as much as it did on the rise of microblogging – after all, the platform itself doesn’t appear to be the cause)

I’ve long been a fan of Mashable amongst the top tech blogs, and this comparison of the Tumblr and Posterous services goes some way to explaining why.

They combine news with good in-depth analysis of services to show what exactly you might want to use them for – and in general this article is pretty good.

It does have one major, major, major omission, though, which is so obvious as to appear almost intentional.

When Jennifer Van Grive details the autoposting options Posterous offers, she writers:

‘a single Posterous video post could auto-post to Twitter, Facebook , YouTube and Vimeo and blog sites, while photo posts could automatically add images to your Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa accounts.’

What she doesn’t make clear is that Posterous will actually autopost to Tumblr.

That’s a major advantage to Posterous, and certainly a major element for discussion in a ‘head-to-head’ comparison.

And as you can see, it’s something I’m playing around with at the moment, with my Posterous blog, and my Tumblr blog linked.