It seems microblogging is all the rage these days, but is it more than a webified instant-messaging widget? It seems to be the logical progression from function-restricted and price-constricted "mainstream" mobile phone users being forced to use texting to get their message across for so long now that one-to-many texting has taken this route. Naviblog's even got its own Twitter widget now (see top of the blog page), just to play around and see what it does and how it enhances the site.
Will the flat-rate data packages now being deployed in many carriers Europe-wide change this to a longing for standard email as we've known it in Japan? When you think about it, people still short-message here, but the price differential is so tiny that no-one really cares.
Will the newfangled functions to be found in mid- and even low-end handsets spur increased usage, for example for GPS or mobile commerce? I think the rule is if it's simple and the hurdle of adoption is low enough in usability and price terms, then it's very likely there'll be strong adoption, at least in the first instances.
Anyway,
this piece of research (about 3MB) from the University of Maryland and NEC Labs America details the architecture and dynamics of microblogging: quite interesting as a primer to the area, and generally interesting when thinking about social communities on the mobile.
