Typepad, Tumblr, Twitter ecosystem 2/2: news programs on TV

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The last entry described the similarity between blogging platforms (Typepad, Tumblr, and Twitter) and our (fantasy) partners. This time, it is about news programs on the TV.

Blogging platforms as news programs on the TV: Typepad is the headline news with nice-looking anchors and computer monitors in the background showing market data (sometimes not). Tumblr is the "rest" tucked after the major news with purposefully less-gorgeous anchors and pseudo-Excel bullet point lists. Twitter is the annoying messages (okay, news) that appear at the bottom or top of the screen. Each has an equally important role, as media companies preach to us, but some roles are always more equal than others.

Typepad: headlines

  • Detailed analysis (Typepad is where the “carefully crafted pieces of informative writing with…” comes in. Whatever.)
  • Storytelling (Using Typepad, I try to tell a story. Using Tumblr and Twitter, I try to draw a picture.)
  • Multimedia (Texts, videos, images, and even audio can be combined into one.)

Tumblr: today's other news

  • Listed (Tumblr posts are updated daily and are vertically streamed.)
  • Some picked, some not (The good thing about viewing lists is that as an audience you feel like you covered everything just by looking at the titles.)
  • Background can be glamorous, main cast not (You cannot hide the fact that each post is short,  both in terms of content and the amount of attention paid, compared with Typepad)

Twitter: sidebar fillers

  • Real-time (Twitter streams are updated so frequently, the window opportunity for each tweet is less than 0.5 seconds. Of course, that short attention span is exactly why Twitter is so useful.)
  • Single sentence (To express something meaningful in 140 characters, you have to eliminate everything non-essential, sometimes even punctuation.)
  • "Hook" for new audience (140 characters are still long enough to express funny/intriguing/controversial ideas. They do stop me from switching channels: i.e. surfing the web.)

What analogy you might use for the ecosystem created by your multiple blogging/writing platforms?