TypePad Adds Microblogging Features

Microblogging is one hot web service at the moment. It is also synonymous with Twitter in the public's eye, though that doesn't seem to stop others from wanting to get a piece of the action. Blogging giant Six Apart has announced a new component to its Type Pad platform, which would allow users to create a “microblog-style blog.” The actual format of the blogs is unchanged, apart from some new themes; instead the new features are the possibility to post by email or iPhone and to push the content to other sites like Facebook or Twitter.

“As a TypePad member, you can have the best of both worlds: a full blog and a microblog-style blog. A TypePad microblog allows you a quick and easy way to share your favorite videos, images and articles with your friends and followers,” the announcement on the official TypePad blog read. “We’ve brought all of these capabilities together in TypePad so you can easily manage your online presence. Your blog is the hub of your online identity and we’re making it easier than ever to participate.“

Anyone familiar with Posterous won't find anything revolutionary here. Users can send short messages, links, videos or whatever it is they want to share by email or iPhone, or using the integrated TypePad QuickPost bookmarklet. This content then gets published on the user's blog like any other post. The other major feature being trumped is the capability to push the published content to other sites like Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed using the “post once, publish everywhere” service, which allows users to easily distribute their content.

Six Apart tries to position its new “microblogging” as an alternative or supplement to Twitter, trumping such advantages like the ability to post photos and the comments system. But the service it's actually competing with is Posterous, the email-based web publishing platform, which offers pretty much the exact same functionality as the new TypePad features.