September/October 2008

A Brief History of Microblogging

Twitter and its competitors have spawned an entire ecosystem.

By Erica Naone

Multimedia •  Download a PDF of the article and time line.   A time line of service launch dates.

Microblogging services--which let subscribers post short personal updates online or broadcast them as text messages--have inspired a slew of ancillary services.
Clients are desktop or mobile-device applications that access microblogs' content. Toys are sites that present the content in new ways, often combined with other data. Accessories meet needs specific to micro­bloggers--such as a way to shorten URLs so that they fit inside status updates. The time line (left and here) of service launch dates provides a snapshot of the whole eco­system.