About a month ago, I wrote up a tongue-in-cheek post about nanoblogging, the obvious successor to the recent rise of microblogging sites like Twitter and Plurk.  The idea was that if everyone is so excited about short, two sentence updates, maybe we should just go to a system where you update your status in two words even more often.  At the time, I meant it as a clever little "look how stupid everyone is" post, but a month later I have to eat a little crow.

I've had a few conversations with some folks whose opinions I respect, and while I still don't really get the whole point of microblogging, I do think there may actually be a legitimate use for a smaller nanoblog-style system.  I've kept up with my nanoblog, to an extent, consistently over the past month and have found out a few things about the process.

1. It's so much faster than microblogging.  This one is obvious.  Two words are generally quicker to come up with and write than a one or two sentences.
2. It forces creativity. My first day, I put in an entry that just said "coffee."  The next time I went out for coffee, I naturally felt like I shouldn't write the same exact thing I did last time, when lead to the entry "caffeine withdrawal."  The next time I post about a coffee break, I'll need to think of something else again.
3. It prompts communication outside of the system.  A big complaint I have with "microblogging" is that the posts naturally turn into a dialog within the system; Someone posts an item of interest, and then a friend posts their own status as a direct comment on their friend's status.  When you're restricted to two words, there is no room for a full conversation, even though you do get curious about what exactly someone you're listening to is doing.  For example, Jason was helping me out with this experiment when he posted "iphone brick."  No room for clarifications, just the two words, which prompted me to get in touch with him to see how things were going with the phone, and whether or not it was really and truly "bricked."

And so, over the course of this experience, my personal nanoblog has grown into a full-fledged nanoblogging system called Pingnode that is now open for registration.  I honestly don't know what sort of "market" there is for a system like this, but if people want to give it a try I'd love to know your experience with it.  The system is up and running at http://pingno.de.  Just so I can keep things manageable, I have sign-ups tied into an invitation system.  If you'd like to give it a try, please use one of the invitation links below; When you sign up, you'll get five invitation codes of your own to pass on to your friends, so be sure to spread the word to anyone that might be interested in this experiment.

http://pingno.de/tab/register/invitation/aDx8IDliYrF7YBYJip7J
http://pingno.de/tab/register/invitation/X5EKzHI5Gc2WkhL46qpY
http://pingno.de/tab/register/invitation/zOK0kgQSGyfo1oRCeOnr
http://pingno.de/tab/register/invitation/3YOlTQns5cKzNmHG4WIt
http://pingno.de/tab/register/invitation/EOJuRYyFQssp7iYqPxiX

If you try a link and it says the invitation has already been used, just come back here and grab one of the other ones.  And if you're interested in following my Pingnode, you can check it out at http://andy.pingno.de