I thought I’d write about a couple of cool websites I’ve been visiting recently.

Back in the day I used MyBlogLog to keep track of what links visitors to this blog were clicking. But then I got bored of it and stopped using it. When I heard that Yahoo! was thinking of buying it, I thought I would check it out again. I actually said, “It would be interesting to see how it’s changed since I last saw it.” And boy has it changed!

It’s not like a social network for blogs. As if we needed another social network! But this is actually quite a good idea because it emphasises the community aspect of blogging. It also reveals connections between blogs that you might have thought didn’t exist. Here is my user profile for MyBlogLog, and here is this blog’s community (feel free to join it of course).

The other website that’s quite impressed me recently is Twitter. It’s another sort-of social network, but it’s more like a blogging tool. But not. It’s from the people who brought us Blogger and Odeo.

At first I had a struggle working out what it actually was. It’s such a basic idea, I needed to make sure I had it straight. You just type in the box what you’re doing. And that’s it! That’s it! At first I thought, “What’s the point in this? I could just write this on my blog.”

Theoretically, one of the best things about blogging is that there are no rules. It shouldn’t really matter if I just rattle out a one-line post. But in reality is does matter, because it looks quite stupid. That’s why I introduced asides to the blog. It’s true — the format of your blog determines your writing style.

Twitter is based entirely on messages that last no more than 149 characters. Like a text message then. And that’s where things start to get cool, because you can send an update from your phone. I can imagine doing this a fair bit on the train. But if you don’t fancy paying the “standard network rate” you can also update via IM or via the web. And you can also receive updates from your friends via IM or on your phone.

It might not amount to much in the long run, but at the moment I really like the idea. It gives me the space to put frivolous nonsense up there without dumping in on blog. Here is my page on Twitter.

Google Talk has some nice new features. It’s a shame more people don’t use it so that I could check them out…

The only time I’ve had a conversation using that Meebo Me widget was last night, when somebody from Meebo thanked me for using it — he found my post via Technorati you see.

The conversation was pretty much along the lines of:
“Thanks for using our widget!”
“No, thank you for inventing it!”
“No, thank you!”
“No, thank you!”
…and so on.

Today they’ve posted this on their blog, and now I’ve posted this on my blog! I feel all warm inside.

I’m test driving this new Meebo Me thing from those good people at Meebo. Look! There it is down there, in the sidebar. It looks like one of those awful shoutboxes, but it’s not. It’s an instant messenger on my blog. You can see when I’m online and send me abusive messages in a quicker and more convenient way than ever! The only problem is that I have to keep a browser window open all the time in order to receive them. We’ll see how long that lasts then…

So I can now use MSN sorry, Windows Live Messenger to have a chitty-chat with Yahoo! Messenger users. But I have to add them all first. Why can’t I just associate my MSN account with a Yahoo! ID? Can somebody tell me, is there a reason for this, or are they — MSN, Yahoo!, the lot — all just being arses again?