Microblogging is a short piece of content that is design for quick interaction with an audience. It is a distinction from long-form content also known as blogging. While short form content comes under the blogging heading, most associate with articles and longer videos.
This is really a concept that arose with the Internet. Before that, most content was long form. Publications such as magazines or newspapers would be filled with articles. These were full length, providing the reader with a lot of information.
It was a concept that was originally followed with the developments of platforms such as Wordpress. This changed when Twitter rolled around. It became the leading microblogging application during the expansion of the Web 2.0 era.
Microblogs are in a variety of formats:
- text
- video
- audio
- images
The social media landscape is changing. It was once structured where each application focused upon a specific function. We saw Youtube become the largest video hosting site. The Facebook family of applications had the main site, Instagram for photos, and a messenger application.
Elon Musk is starting to shake that up with his ideas regarding that platform. He is introducing the idea of the Everything Application where he is looking to merge social media and finance together.
TikTok was also instrumental in the shift. It introduced what can be considered microblogging of video called shorts. These were videos that were roughly 90 seconds or less. This contrasted with YouTube in the fact the latter had mostly longer videos on them.
Shorts ends up conveying information in quick clips. This can be the design of the video with recording only taking a minute or might be clips of something much longer.
This move pushed YouTube to incorporate shorts into its platform.
Web 3.0
Web 3.0 is being discussed as the next iteration of the Internet. This is arising from the use of blockchain, a new way of housing data without the use of centralized servers.
Leofinance is one of the first to bring microblogging to the blockchain. With the release of LeoThreads it is testing out the infrastructure on the Hive network.
By using Hive for the purpose of microblogging, it allows for the incorporation of cryptocurrency into a Web 3.0 dynamic. Since Hive is a decentralized database, the data is posted on chain. This makes it immutable.
At the same time, tokens can be utilized for the purpose of distributed reward pools under the Proof-of-Brain mechanism.
The key distinction from this blockchain's perspective is that what is post through LeoThreads is not a top line post. Instead, the comment layer is where all the "threads" are placed. This makes a difference in the users feeds and autovoters.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, is still looking to do this following the Web 2.0 model. Advertising might be something that he eventually pulls back from. He is looking to replicate some of PayPal by having a built in payment system. This will necessitate building wallets. Here is where the account ownership is lacking.
One move that is being explored by the Twitter team is to implement subscriptions, a monthly charge to access certain features on the platform. This is one attempt to break the dependence upon advertising.
Microblogging remains one of the most popular forms for content creators online. Up to this point, it is not really monetized. Establishing this on a Web 3.0 infrastructure would allow for tokenization.
One of the keys to success of Web 3.0 with social media applications is going to come down to transaction fees. While this is commonplace in the financial world, with banks, brokerage firms, and other websites charging for transactions, it is unheard of on these types of platforms. People do not pay to post a Tweet or give an upvote.