1. Plurk
The updates or tweets (as it is called in Twitter) are called plurks. Members can send plurks to other members in the form of links to their blog posts or other sites and short messages. Plurk gives you a chance to create your online journal and share it with your friends and family. Using Plurk will help you network with other people who have the same interests as you are. This site is a combination of social networking and microblogging and the services it provides are simple yet very useful and not only for ordinary internet users but most especially for those who wish to connect and market with other people online.
2. Sweetter
Quite a unique name for a microblogging site. This open source microblogging site provides a lot of fun stuff. Sweetter like Twitter allows you to write what you are doing and updates your friends about your activities. You can write everything you want to write about. Following other members is also possible and they can see what you post on your page and vice versa. Replying to another member’s post is also possible (@user). Sweetter uses a TODO system where you can send someone a list of things to do. This site also applies the voting system where members can vote your posts which causes for your karma to go up or down. The karma ranges from -50 to 50 points. Members can vote up the posts that they like while vote down those that they don’t want to appear higher in the index page. Updating your profile is also possible where you can either change your avatar, your personal URL or your location.
3. Microblogr
This microblogging and social networking service allows instant collaboration with friends from the network using their SMS feature. It allows instant communication with members and newly found friends. Once you send a message to your friends, they can receive it on their index page and also on their mobile phone if this service is activated by them. Tracking of messages as well as those of your friends is also possible. For example, if you want to meet up with your friends in the network, you can just send a simple and short message and all those from your network will be notified either through their microblog account or their mobile phones.
4. Yammer
Yammer is a great tool for companies and organizations to update them of their member’s activities and answer a simple question, “what are you working on?”. Everytime an employee answers this question, a feed is created to all its members which enables co-workers to discuss different ideas, ask relevant questions, share news, links and other information. Every employee at Yammer has a profile and accessing past conversations for reference is possible. Yammer is a great service for companies and other organizations. The privacy of every member and the company is secured as those who can access are only those with a valid company email address. Yammer service is free, however, if a company would like to claim and manage their own network, they can just pay a minimal amount.
5. Tumblr
Tumblr tweets are called tumbledogs. These tumbledogs can be short blogs less than 140 characters which can be links, quotes, photos, videos, music and dialogues. Anybody can freely express himself using these tumbledogs at Tumblr. All members can also customize their own page or even have their own domain names. Tumblr provides great service and joining takes only a few seconds. You can join at anytime and explore the simple yet very functional service of this microblogging and social networking site.
