Microblogging is relatively new social phenomenon of web 2.0 and a variant of blogging that allows instant and short messaging via mobile, in email or on the web (Ehrlich & Shami, 2010). Microblogs are short posts intended to update friends and/or interested observers on current affairs (that is interesting content, activities or observations). Some of the service providers for microblogs are Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce (Ehrlich & Shami, 2010). The character limit for a Tweet message is 140.
With the increased desire for transparent governance, politicians (being people’s representatives) are motivated to connect with constituents via Twitter to keep them posted on issues they are working on (Chi & Yang, 2010). The politicians use Twitter to sell themselves as brands with the hope of gaining constituents (that is grassroots) support.
The issues revolve around the individual politician’s manifesto, policies and/or development agenda, inter alia (Chi & Yang, 2010). Twitter provides easy and agile microblogging in a fluid network of subscribers for lightweight information updates and back-channeling on opinions, events as well as status.
Nevertheless, there is no surety at hand whether the use of Twitter by politicians will enhance their public image or comprehensively deliver their intended information to constituents. Entities with past experiences on a populace opinion on particular topics may add value to a politician’s efforts to penetrate and appeal following (Chi & Yang, 2010).
Web-enabled social bookmarking services allow students to manage personal bookmarks of web pages of interest, share them with colleagues (within and without classroom) as well as recommend or exchange inferences regarding particular contents. Tags as opposed to traditional file folders provide ease to organize bookmarks.
Tags enhance search across bookmarked web pages. From a portfolio management perspective, students’ use of internet bookmark services provides opportunity to profile and understand individual or group learning process. Such insights can contribute to students’ critical thinking, communication skills as well as content mastery. Evaluating internet bookmarking activities may augment the overall learning process assessment measures for individual or group students (Newby et al., 2011).
“del.icio.us” is a bookmarking and resource sharing web-enabled service popular because it requires general web skills; while, the user enjoys almost instant benefits with less overhead (Farwell & Waters, 2010). During bookmarking, “del.icio.us” allows an individual to annotate browser-free. “del.icio.us” self-organizing approach cuts its niche among similar bookmark service systems.
Both RSS feeds and bookmarks save user’s time. With RSS feeds, the user has more control over the sites to visit as well as the volition to unsubscribe. RSS feeds give latest updates. Through tags, social bookmarking is providing a relatively cost friendly means of getting or sharing volumes of up-to-date information. Liberalized tag structure and deregulated tagging format serve as an attraction as well as a deterrent for potential users.
Bookmarking may be abused, especially for sites with a huge following. Individuals seeking immediate general public vote may be easily deceived. Some RSS feeds may fail to display image contents contained in the original website. With RSS feeds, URLs for the specific websites are not revealed during viewing, this may confuse on which specific field is in use.
Frequency of visits to a feed by an individual; number of subscribers to a feed as well as reasons for unsubscribing from feeds may remain immediately unknown to publishers in case they want to enhance or customize feeds to end-user tastes. Feeds are summarized, thus may fail to paint a comprehensive picture or lack specific details.
References
Chi, F., & Yang, N. (2010). Twitter Adoption in Congress: Who Tweets First? Web.
Ehrlich, K., & Shami, N. S. (2010). Microblogging Inside and Outside the Workplace.
Farwell, T. M., & Waters, R. D. (2010). Exploring the Use of Social Bookmarking Technology in Education: An Analysis of Students’ Experiences using a Course-specific Delicious.com Account. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 6(2), 398-408. Web.
Newby, T. J., Stepich, P. A., Lehman, J. D., Russell, J. D., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. (2011). Educational Technology for Teaching and Learning (4th ed.). Boylston Street, Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.