Since this is part of my scientific research activities I am on the constant lookout for new Web 2.0 services. I like doing that. Some people have a hobby, I have a research interest. Over the last couple of weeks I have come across two novel approaches to social media that I find worth spreading the word for. I have not yet been able to incorporate these services into my daily routine, but I constantly find myself tempted to change my workflows just to accommodate one or the other.
The first of these services is Shortmail. Some time ago, I wrote about my approach for keeping up with an inbox zero strategy. The key element is to deal with all email requests that can be handled in two minutes or less immediately. Only requests that take a longer time to process are filed and taken care of whenever there is enough time. Unfortunately, there rarely is “enough time”. So why not force people to send only emails requests that can actually be dealt with in two minutes or less?
Shortmail does exactly that by restricting emails to 500 characters in length. If you send an email containing more than 500 characters to a Shortmail address, you will get an automated response with a web link that allows you to edit the email down to the required length. If this is ignored, the email gets delivered to a quarantine folder in Shortmail that, as an added bonus, therefore also gobbles up all spam email.
I find the service extremely well implemented. They have a nice Web Interface as well as an iOS App and – in case you are using a Mac – are fully integrated into the excellent Sparrow email client. Unfortunately, the service is not transparent when using it through a regular email client. Using Shortmail’s SMTP server for sending out email is a bit of a guessing game whether you have already reached your 500 character limit or not.
The second social media service that caught my attention is Cowbird. Cowbird is a social network site optimized for storytelling. It sort of serves as a personal journal for keeping track of things you find remarkable but somehow require wording too complex for a tweet on Twitter, too meaningful to be wasted on a status update on Facebook and not involved enough for a full grown blog entry. The service has some similarities with mircoblogging sites such as Tumblr but feels a lot more consistent in terms of its dedication to storytelling.
What I like most about Cowbird is that you can really feel that a lot of TLC went into the design of the site. It focuses on visual representation rather than text, which I consider a well-received departure from traditional social media sites. In contrast to Shortmail, I have actually started using Cowbird by posting an observation I recently had when I visited the Austrian Ministry of Education. I am planning on continuing to use the service for little stories like that.
So, if you have the time and interest, give these sites a try. You might find them charmingly fresh and simply useful.