140Char

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.

I’m really intrigued to find out what other people are using Posterous for. The ease with which you can post by email, and send images and video which are automatically resized means I keep toying with it for various things but haven’t found something which has got me using in regularly (I’ve already got two self-hosted Wordpress blogs including this one, and a pretty active Twitter account etc).

I know that Steve Rubel is using it as his main place to post in a lifestreaming style.

And the Austin American Stateman newspaper used it to crowdsource images from readers.

Plus more visually-creative people seem to be embracing it – e.g. Christian Payne.

But I need more inspiration – are you using Posterous, and if so, how are you using it? Alternatively have you seen particularly good or bad examples of people using it for a specific purpose or reason?

I didn’t realise that Twitstat has a list of the clients which post most frequently to Twitter (that are tracked by @twitstat), until I saw the recent list published by Mashable.

The web interface tops the list at 29.57%, then it’s

• Tweetdeck 10.58% (Uber client for Twittering and monitoring)
• Twitterfeed 5.54% (Automated website and blog feeds)
• Twhirl 4.92% (Effective Twitter client)
• Twitteriffic 3.79% (Twitter client for mobile).

And the next four places are all mobile clients, with Twitpic in tenth.

Warren at Twittermaven took things a little further by aggregating the mobile, desktop and utility categories, and pointing out more people use mobile to post than desktop clients. One of his posters has also pointed out that the data could be misleading as people might post through the full web page on mobile internet.

But I’d expect the trend to be fairly close to reality. A mobile-optimised experience is likely to be an easier ’sell’ than moving from the web interface to a client. And although early adopters and corporate Tweeters can find huge value from tools like Tweetdeck,  that’s not the average Twitter user.

The top 10 applications account for 70% of usage, which conforms to The Long Tail. Friends of 140char on the list include MrTweet at #40 and disapointly Cesare’s great Posty client is down the list at #211.