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A Brief History of Microblogging

Twitter and its competitors have spawned an entire ecosystem.
August 19, 2008

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.

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  • A time line of service launch dates.

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