Could you continue if Twitter went down permanently? Will web 2.0 be the same? How will your disciples know what you're doing? Is there an alternative?
These are questions we all have to ask ourselves in this grave predicament. With Twitter's continued downtime over the past year users have begin looking at alternatives. But before we look at those, let's first look at the worst case scenario of twitter going down permanently now and then let's come together to discuss it in hopes we find a solution.
Here are some of the instant media network alternatives we've found for you for this dire scenario.
- Jaiku (w/Mini-surveys & group discussions (activity streams), nokia ap) Review#1 Review#2 Review#3
- Tumblr (w/Picture, Video & Audio sharing, no character limitations, im agg) Review#1 Review#2 | Company Snapshot)
- Plazes
- Friendfeed (stumble, netflix & facebook in one) Review
- Pownce (w/ Picture & Video sharing,Upload, threaded discussions) Review#1 Review#2
- Brightkite (w/ real time event update capabilities) Review
- Utterz (w/picture, Video & Audio sharing)
- Ticketapp (Kind of like online stickies)
- Wassr (Asian Twitter)
- Diditz (Asian) | Company Snapshot)
- Smsgupshup (Send messages to groups of people)
- Poodz (French twitter)
- Hiktu (w/Video & Audio sharing) Review
- beenup2
- Mytalk.at (beta) (w/multiple language support, w/Photo & Video sharing, google codes)
- zyb (beta)
- Plurk (w/ Karma points, journal your life, horizontal timeline ) Review#1 Review#2
- Yobird
- Twoorl
- Koornk
- Youare
- Statushq | Company Snapshot)
- Moodmill (w/ smilies) Review
- Meshly
- Podobo (tag rich topic posts) Review
- Rejaw (Alpha) (w/real time conversations, Shouts (replies), threaded discussions) Review#1 Review#2
- Mysay
- Utterli
- Present.ly (Enterprise application)
- Coopapp (Enterprise application)
- Kwippy (Unlimited character text, twitterclone, threaded discussions, im agg) Review#1 Review#2
- Zobzee (Twitter & friendfeed combined)
- Blip.fm (Twitter for music fanatics, also known as fuzz) Review
- Yammer (Enterprise application) Review# Review#2) | Company Snapshot)
- Dogear (IBM enterprise app, bookmarking)
- Spotjots sadf**
- Zannel (w/ Picture & Video sharing) Review | Company Snapshot)
- Identi,ca (Little downtime,100 sites share load) Review#1 Review#2
- Seesmic (Video twitter) Review | Company Snapshot)
- Jisco (beta) (w/Multiple Language Support, integrates w/your twitter account, leave notes) Review
Legend:
- agg (aggragator-all in one feed)
- app (application)
- sadf** (typo, a little joke... very little....see there it goes)
Prognosis: Great! From the reviews i read(on easily 50 sites over the few days), the following sites are good alternatives in our estimation:
- Plurk (Twitter for points!)
- Jisco & mytalk.at (Twitter for multi languages)
- Wassr (Twitter for Asian languages)
- Zannel (Twitter for Multimedia)
- Seesmic & Hictu (Twitter for videos)
- Blip.fm (Twitter for music)
- Pownce (Twitter for file sharing)
- Brightkite (Twitter for organizers)
- Yammer (Twitter for companies)
- Zannel & spotjots (Twitter for Location)
- Plurk (Journal Twitters)
Personal Favorites and Our reviews: Our personal top picks based on reviews we've read over the past month and by signing on to each service)
- We like Zannel. It allows users to take a photo from their iphone and it will record the location that person is at. Now parents can track their kids. If you make them take a photo you can instantly see if they're where they say they are!!! Besides that the photo and video uploading, rating and real time commenting options are great. Something Twitter certainly lacks. We get why twitter is popular however. It's the facebook (of old) compared to myspace (friendfeed/pownce).
- Spotjots is like Zannel but even better!! Just check out how nice their site is. Click on the map and notice 1)high quality, 2)precision of location. This one ranks first on useability.
- Pownce is good for sharing legal files with others on the network. Up to 10MB/file. Like Rejaw and Twitter, a desktop application(Apollo) to alert you of new replies is available.
- Tumblr is good if you're an Aol Instant message user as it gives you updates while using the service. Although you lack the ability to leave comments on people's messages, the clean interface and features make up for it. Features such as the ability to have your own domain name. I definetely think this is a "tumbleblog" worth creating especially with the html markup options we're all accustomed to here on Active Rain.
- We also like Brightkite. Brightkite would be extremely useful for members of any community/company/organization/committee to get the heads up on what others are doing at a certain event and at the same time be given an update by one person (ceo for example) to all those in attendance at such an event. Imagine in this scenario, Matt Heaton or Bob Stewart being able to tweet everyone (in their adress book) on their phone that the location of the next Rebarcamp was moved elsewhere. Would also make for a fun easter egg/treasure hunt event with clues being given to savvy users as a bonus. I think this will be very popular as more and more people learn about it.
- Moodmill For those who like using yahoo or msn/windows live/hotmail messengers, this site might be right for you. Basically, the idea behind this is being able to express how you feel up to the minute using a smily icon in front of your text comments as to quickly relay to your friends or family members if you could use a pick-me-up or be left alone. I find this interesting for overseas relationships, military personel etc, but it's got a long way to go still.
- Kwippy is great for various reasons. 1)allows you to write as many characters as you want in your text box messages(like tumbir) and 2)integrates your facebook status which ofcourse could be a blog post as we all know now. What we also liked about Kwippy is it's ability to allow you to share your "kwips" on other sites like digg, de.lico.us, facebook and twitter.
- Yammer currently looks to be the best site application for Corporations. It allows Executives to quickly find answers to their questions without having to go throughout the entire office for it. Powerpoint presenations can be shared as well.
- While Twitter allows one to let others know what you're doing, Tumbir let's you share those experiences according to Founder David Karp. The big reason we like Tumbir is due to it's customized design features. Like Wordpress, Tumbir has an almost endless set of fonts,backgrounds, templates and layouts making it very easy to get the look and feel you want for the best experience.
- Blip.fm looks promising as Fuzz Artist CEO Jeff Yasuda is currently in the works to allow music streems from music giants Warner, Sony, EMI and Universal. This could completely change how you listen to music. Yasuda also owns Yammer and Pownce which we mentioned previously.
- Mytalk.at also looks like it may become popular for advertisers as you have the ability to embed google adsense and analytics codes directly into html posts as to allow you to create seperate pages in your account each one directed at a different set of consumers with links in the form of topic posts (looks like a google search result). So these should easily be picked up by the bots.
- We find Rejaw interesting as it allows people to add a desktop application to their computer called Radar which, once installed, notifies you of new shouts, replies and whispers to your account. Kind of like getting a buzz on your cellphone. This is a Macintosh only feature (sorry pc users) You'll be glad to know that both twitter and pownce also have such an application for their users. Miscellaneous replies are allowed but posts get closed after 3 days if noone has commented. This makes it easier to find live discussions.
- Jaiku, a google owned company(Since 10/07) is probably Twitter's competitor right now and is setup very similarly to it. 140 character limit, api for developers, lifestream, sms, etc. We're still trying to differentiate the features but it's a good google clone if ever there was one. btw: some people pronounce this "Geicku", not to be confused with "Geico"
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Twitter Notes:
Twtiter Diehards: For those of you who want to see who the Top 100 most followed twitterers are, go to TwitDir
Character Limits: Twitter allows you to use 140 characters. The above sites improve that. Kwippy for one has unlimited limits(not really microblogging anymore i suppose)
Blogfeeds to Twitter: Using Twitterfeed you can have your posts show up directly on your twitter account much like Active Rain has set up for you here as well.
Facebook: Keep in mind that Facebook now has a "status" feature. So you can have a status facebook feed go into twitter.
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What are all these sites? What are they trying to accomplish? What is the term for it all? Microblogging
You can read more about all of the above services at news media sites like digg, newsweek, techcrunch or wired to name a few.
This post was inspired by Christopher and Stephanie somers with their post on the Synopsis of the Housing Market. We feel this is probably our most informative post yet as it really will help users find the service best for them. Twitter may be all the rage now, but there are a lot of competitors on their heels who offer far better bang for the buck. Try them out and please reply with your review for one or all. With that information we can then create a post which polls and or gives more specific reviews based on people's favorites. Thanks and happy reading.
A MUST SEE: SPOTJOTS.COM
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Ok now if you've been reading this whole post and want to know if there's an application being developed or existing that will allow you to make one message/topic/shout and have it show up on some of those networks (kind of like posting here and having it show up on your bloglog, localism, outside blog posts to name a few) then ask no more as there is such an application and it is: PING.FM This is called an Aggragator. It's basically a feed that goes directly into a host of different site networks. Especially big network sites like facebook and linkedin.
You can post something to the following networks:
But Wait... There's more (insert damon wayans voiceover). Have you seen Profilactic? (Aggragator) They support 195 Social Media Sites.
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For those who still don't know what tweeting is and what it can do for you, i highly suggest listening to this 35 min CNET podcast.
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Want to make your own Microblogging site? i know we do. Try Revou's software.
Note to self: go through that list and see what's missing for our other lists.
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