In the Wake of Microblogging

A fair amount of speculation as to the influence microblogging might exert on people has appeared on info-centered listservs and in the press lately, most notably in Clive Thompson's New York Times Magazine piece. Will the 140-character bursts change the way people write or how we define relationships? Too soon to tell.

However, there is one medium where we can observe the effects of microblogging: the good old-fashioned static Web page. Since the advent of such services as Twitter, the public has rediscovered its taste for minimalist aphoristic sites. For evidence, just look to the recent popularity of Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle and Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the Earth Yet?.