How Twitter Will Change Your Photoblog in 2009

Last year Twitter really hit the mainstream big style and bloggers began adding widgets to sidebars to display their latest tweets.

In 2009, Twitter is set to become even more tightly integrated within blog design. From ‘Tweetbacks’ and ‘Tweetstats’ to tweet comments and ‘TwitterRolls’, they are all about to start appearing on blogs.

In a recent blog post, Rachel Cunliffe lists 10 ways Twitter will impact on blog designs this year:

1. Bloggers will start adding ‘Tweetbacks’ to their blog posts.
2. ‘Tweetstats’ will be added to blog sidebars.
3. Catch-all social networking widgets in blog sidebars will be ditched in favour of ‘TweetThis’.
4. Bloggers will start mixing blog posts and tweets into a single column.
5. Visitors to blogs will be able to comment on tweets displayed within a blog.
6. ‘BlogTweet’ Feeds will be used to include or exclude tweets.
7. Form fields will be added to enable visitors to fill in their Twitter name when adding comments to a blog.
8. More use will be made of sidebar widgets to display favourite tweets, recent tweets, etc.
9. ‘TwitterRolls’ will be added alongside Blogrolls.
10. Blog design will become influenced by Twitter themes.

Many of the features are already up and running and can be found on increasing numbers of blogs. Some are even on FotoWIRED. For example, I have included a sidebar widget showing real time ‘Tweets’ for photography, there is a ‘TweetThis’ link at the end of each post enabling visitors to send it to Twitter, and at the bottom of the page I have included a ‘Follow Me On Twitter’ link for anyone wishing to do just that.

One feature of Twitter sure to take off with a bang is ‘TwitPic’. An example of the viral effect of instant image posting via Twitter was Janis Krums’ photo of a ditched airliner in the Hudson River on January 15 this year. This poignant image of passengers climbing onto the plane’s wing, along with the immediacy of Janis’ caption “There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.” is a striking example of photography’s ability to capture ‘decisive moments’. As of today, his Twitpic has had 380944 views so far. How long will it before digital cameras are fitted with Twitpic buttons to send images to photoblogs instantly?

The future of the photoblog is surely set to change, and Twitter is likely to be one way in which the online photography community will embrace this in 2009.

Have your own predictions? Add them to the comments.

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