140Char

You’ve probably seen reports and coverage of Twitter claim that updates are all about what people have had for lunch.

Well, maybe there’s some justification for it. If you’re as forgetful and web-addicted as I am, it’s easy to put something in the oven, and forget to set the timer.

So why not just microblog it as soon as you race back to your laptop, and have a permanent reminder of when you put the pizza in the oven?

(I realise this is a bit more frivolous than normal, but it’s been a hectic week. And if you want to see when I last put something on for 40 minutes at 200 degrees, you can find me here.)

Many apologies, but although I said my exclusive interview with Blippr founders Jonathan and Chris would be published today, a late night scheduling mistake saw it appear yesterday. And by the time I’d got online and realised, I thought it would be pointless to put it back offline for a day simply to avoid looking stupid.

I can only blame the fact I was still excited about getting two interviews with interesting figures in microblogging for the same week, after speaking to Posty creator Cesare as well.

I’m looking to interview quite a few more people in the coming days and weeks, so feel free to volunteer and beat the rush….

A quick post today due to a heavy workload, but I had to mention one of the most interesting visualisations of Twitter I’ve seen in a while at Twitter StreamGraphs.

It’s a third party creation which either lets you see the last 200 tweets containing a search term, or the last 200 tweets by a username.

It’s useful, and it looks great….it’s been created by Jeff Clark, who also created TwitterArcs and TwitterSpectrum.

I’m obviously a big fan of microblogging, having started this site with a few good people. And yet the current buzz around the concept does bring some of the problems to the forefront.

For starters, how fragmented will my identity become? I already have another blog, a profile on LinkedIn, a profile on a group magazine project, a profile on Facebook, one on Myspace, and one on Twitter. And that’s just the main sites I use on a day-to-day basis. And any reasonable input into microblogging requires a lot of time – enough to have an effect on the blogging output of a lot of people. Although surprisingly it can have a positive effect.

But until now, Twitter has been synonymous with microblogging. But with new challengers coming every day, is it really possible to comprehensively update:

• Twitter
• Plurk
• Twoorl
• Identi.ca
• Globme
• Jaiku
• Pownce

And still have time to check other comments on Friendfeed and Socialthing?

You can always try cross publishing, and the number of posts brought to you by services like Ping.fm has radically increased. But is it really worth autofeeding yourself across so many networks? In the early stages the same early adopters will inhabit most of these sites, so you’re likely to be bombing most of the same people several times.

Or you can try and manually update each site, and unless you’re able to multitask to the nth degree, you can drive yourself insane within a week.

Luckily the answer to the problem will arrive eventually in the self-selection of the main sites. And that will simply come down to where the groups of friends exist. That’s why I think Twitter is secure for quite a while longer, as most people will have already reached a critical mass of connections that they won’t find on the other networks yet.

The issue it does raise, is a wider one, on how many different identities and personas are possible around an individual with even a wide sphere of influence and a lot of spare time – and where will that time come from?