The Best of Both Worlds: Microblogging on TypePad

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.

TypePad brings you unique approach to microblogging:

• “Post from anywhere” capabilities with email, iPhone, and the new TypePad "Blog It" bookmarklet
• New simple, professionally-designed, stylish themes
• “Post once, publish everywhere” with built-in support for Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed
• Control of your own advertising, your domain, and your personal brand
• All backed with support and training from TypePad One

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.

We’ll update your services for you
Our “post once, publish everywhere” service automatically updates your friends and followers on other web sites like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. We’ll save you time, and help you promote your blog. Here’s how it works:

Easy images
Twitter is great for posting 140 characters worth of a thought, but it is not easy to attach images. With TypePad, you can post a photo on your microblog and TypePad will automatically update Twitter and post a link to your photo on TypePad. Rather than driving traffic to another third-party service like Twitpic, point people back to your site so your friends can comment.

Full service
If you want the full content and blog management capabilities, we have it. If you want fast and easy microblogging, we now have that too. And you can manage it all – your comments, your posting, your community, your services, your brand -- with the same control, power and support you expect from TypePad.

Get started
Microblog will expand the way you think about blogging. To see how easy it is, just sign in and add a blog to your account or try the new Pico theme with your existing blog. And, of course, if you have any questions, just let us know.

Comments

[Mike Uhl]

Interesting information. Definitely something to get back to and look at more closely.

[Brian Shields]

I would like to do it the other way around... to take my Facebook link feed and publish it automatically to my Typepad blog. Is that possible? I know the link feed is available as RSS.

[Bill Barol]

There doesn't seem to be any easily apparent way to control which outside services (i.e., Twitter, Facebook) microblog posts get shared with on a per-post basis, using the "Blog It" bookmarklet. Or am I missing it? What I'd like to be able to do is grab content using the bookmarklet, indicate via a checkbox whether I want it shared with outside services, and if so, which ones, and then publish. Make sense? Thanks.

[Patricia]

Love it, it makes things so much easier! Being dutch I really heart Mobypicture but it is their - and not my site- that people are directed towards.... thanks Typepad! Cynthia

[Dinah]

Hrm. Sounds like this just applies if you want to ONLY microblog. I'd love to integrate my microblogging into the flow of my longer posts, but this teaser implies I'd have to switch to a new template.

Ah! Only after clicking through to read about Pico "the microblogging template" does it finally become clear in the body text that it also supports longer posts. May want to make that a little clearer...

[Dinah]

Still puzzled. Where does someone with Advanced Themes who wants to integrate this functionality into an existing blog get started?

[IHahn]

I don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about ...

[kimmi8]

That's not something that we have currently but a feature that we're considering for future changes.

[Geu]

Hi Bill, there are two things you can do.

1) Set your preferences for Sharing (see http://help.sixapart.com/tp/us/sharing_settings.html for instructions)
If you have Twitter/Facebook checked as defaults, then when you compose from Blog It, your post will automatically be shared to these services

2) Use the "Edit in TypePad..." button from Blog It. This is a new feature that we introduced yesterday. It'll capture all the text you had captured from Blog It and display it in the TypePad compose page. This is great if you want to overwrite your Sharing options, or want to categorize your post.

Give it a try and let us know!

[Geu]

Hi Dinah, all of the features that apply to microblogging also apply to full blogging. The best way to experience these features is from the all new TypePad application.

Here's what you can do:
* Make sure you're on the all new TypePad
* Select the blog you want. On the blog Overview page, note on the right column a little section called "Other Ways to Post"

This section contains instructions for setting up the Blog It bookmarklet; your secret email address to be used when you want to post via email; and instructions for using the mobile web app.

You can also "post once, publish everywhere". Make sure you set up your Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed accounts in Accounts->Other Accounts, and everytime you compose a new post/page, you'll have the option to share your content to these services.

Hope this helps!

[Geu]

Hi IHahn, I would love to help! Is there anything specific that you're having trouble setting up?

[Dinah]

Thanks for the extra detail, Geu! :)

[Thomasina]

A suggestion. I have a multi-column blog layout and I suspect I won't want to abandon that. Even so, I wanted to have a closer look at the Pico theme. But it's greyed out in the design area of my blog and so I can't look at it unless I'm willing to set my blog to 1-column first. Which I'm not.

Please, allow all themes to be *previewed*, regardless of existing layout. Just stop us from *applying* them if our column choices are incompatible.

Alternatively, link a large sample image of the new theme to the blog entry where you introduce it.

[Leigh Hanlon]

The iPhone TypePad app introduced in 2008 mangles photos taken with the iPhone by downsizing them and then stretching them into pixelated fuzziness when posting. This issue has remained unresolved for more than a year now.

Has this problem been fixed or will iPhone photos uploaded through the various microblogging options be similarly distorted?

[IHahn]

The point is, I dont' even know what microblog means, and they don't explain it.

[Leigh Hanlon]

"Microblogging" means that instead of posting a long blog entry, you instead concentrate on bite-size updates. These are usually a paragraph at most and are updated more frequently than a traditional blog. Lately, the trend is to post updates to a single service (like TypePad) which also sends the update to Facebook, Twitter and such. In some cases, the other site will only display an excerpt with a link back to your TypePad blog.

Increasingly, microblogging also includes audio, photos and video.

[The Typepad Team]

Thanks for that great explanation of the concept of microblogging, Leigh!

[The Typepad Team]

great idea, Thomasina - are you able to create a new blog to test the microblogging theme out? Then, you won't have to preview the theme on your existing blog.

[The Typepad Team]

we're working on the iPhone application now to improve it, for sure. You can also use TypePad from Safari, and use your mobile posting address too.

[The Typepad Team]

you could set up an additional "microblog-only" blog, and incorporate those posts into your regular blog via RSS. The best way to figure this out is probably to talk with our TypePad One support team, who can dive into the details more with you. Let us know if we can help!

[Leigh Hanlon]

I appreciate the continuing efforts to improve how the iPhone app handles photos. My question, however, is really whether it's possible to post undistorted, high-quality photos using Blog It -- or whether Blog It also suffers from the same photo problems when used on an iPhone.

[IHahn]

(Okay, thx! But I rarely would use this.) I do check the boxes for FF & Twitter when I post a blog entry, so what's the difference?

[serge the concierge]

When is the 'Blackberry' mobile blogging function coming back?

[celeste w]

I cannot find instructions on how to use email to send to the microblog and to various services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. On Posterous, this instruction is very easy to find. Thanks.

[m]

You can post undistorted photos from iPhone by this:

1. Open Apple's "Photos" app on iPhone.
2. Open "Camera Roll".
3. Press sub menu icon on the end of photos/videos list.
4. Select a photo you want to post.
5. Press "Copy" button on the end of photos/videos list.
6. Close "Photos" app.
7. Create new e-mail message.
8. Paste the copy of photo data into the message.
9. Send it to your TypePad blog's e-mail address.

NOTE: You need to send it via such a "Yahoo! Mail" or mailbox services you can send several mega bites data.

Sample photo posted from iPhone 3gs is here:
http://masabossa.typepad.jp/microblog/2009/08/waterfalls-photo.html

[The Typepad Team]

great explanation - thank you!

[BountyBowl]

Hello,

This sounds like a great feature. Can you tell me if the following scenario is supported?

I would like to use the microblogging feature to replace a linkroll from my Delicious that currently sits in our sidebar (see www.igglesblog.com). Can I use the microblog feature to post only to the sidebar and not as part of our main blog content? If so, is there a way to allow for comments on the microblog in the sidebar.

Would love to know if this is possible -- the ability to comment in the sidebar is what we're looking for.

Thanks.

[Daniele]

Is there a way to add categories while I'm posting via email?

[Woody M. Collins]

Is this the same as sharing your Twitter and Facebook?

I hope that it is truly difference because microblogging should be more than just sharing a title to Twitter and Facebook. I would like to send the micro-post like the first 140 or so characters.

[Ginevra]

I've been using it in all sorts of other ways - for a photoblog, for saving recipes I want to try...microblogging, especially with the Blog It button, has been fun. :)

[Woody M. Collins]

I will try it and find out the difference, if any!

[Woody M. Collins]

Drum Roll Please!!!!

On Twitter, it posted just the title in my Twitter stream. That STINKS!

On Facebook, it posted the title and a brief portion of the post in my Facebook notes. THATS'S WAY TOO COOL!

And this was all done by SHARING with the suggested microblogging theme.

[Woody M. Collins]

A Double Drum Roll Please!!!

I am either confused or this microblogging is 'all about nothing'. I tried another blog without the microblogging theme and etc. I just SHARE it with Twitter and Facebook. It worked!

Surely, I am missing something.

[Innovation strategy]

I think that the most important feature is that you can update your content from anywhere in a flick of switch. I travel alot, so this feature is crucial for me. When I learn about a new technology, I update my web site right away.