I've been considering microblogging. There's the technically appealing twtxt. And fediverse seems popular amongst some cool people.
There seem to be different modalities for text-based content. I do not have a good classification, but there certainly is a difference between an SMS, an email, an RFC, a novel and a textbook. Here I'm going to consider only electronic communication, and only communication that can have responses. That is, textual electronic methods of discussion.
The obvious properties of a communication method are allowed length of text and latency. SMS, chats and microblogging platforms limit text length and have a latency of seconds. Email and blogs have practically unlimited length but have a higher (perceived) latency. An email message will often be received in seconds, but typical UX for emails is built for checking every now and then. Blogs are often updated in seconds, but the visitor, aggregator or RSS reader is much slower.
Other significant properties are the perceived effort of sending and intrusiveness of receiving a message. Intrusiveness also has to do with publicity of the message: is it one-to-one, to a specific group or completely public. In my view only targeted messages can be intrusive. The most intrusive message type must be SMS, then email, then chat pings and private messages. The perceived effort of sending is low for chat, medium for email and high for a blog.
Now, consider what kinds of discussions you want to have.
The most basic one might be simple daily things with your family or colleagues. You pick a somewhat intrusive message type because it's important to get an answer. Mostly a chat is suitable; you don't need a long text but you hope for a quick answer.
For more detailed discussions, whether technical, philosophical or something else, you have two main options. Either you discuss ideas in real time with other people, simulating a real-life discussion (which a chat is good for). Or you use long-form text and put in some effort while writing. Since the bottleneck tends to be thinking, a higher latency and required effort does not matter. Email (for limited-audience discussions) or a blog (for public) are good fits.
This is where I scratch my head. Maybe there's another type of discussion that microblogging is a good fit for?
But I'm afraid it's all just social media hype and network effects. Or maybe it's the next best thing to a chat when you don't have a good community to chat with.
Microblogging seems good for nothing. Please convince me otherwise!
~bouncepaw replied to this post and I replied back.