Dip Into Blip.fm

I wrote about last.fm a while ago, after a bit of a fiddle with that particular music community site. They’ve improved the interface a bit, but I never got hooked on it. I am, however, now totally addicted to blip.fm.

The best way I think of describing blip.fm is that it’s like twitter with songs. You can search a huge database of songs, play them and ‘blip’ them – share them with other people on the site along with a pithy comment. So instead of sharing tweets, you’re sharing songs. You are the DJ.

You can select favourite DJs to join your ‘song stream’ or just listen to what everyone around the world is listening to. It’s really, really cool.

The other great thing about it is that it’s stupidly easy to export a link to a song into Twitter or Facebook.

If you haven’t given blip.fm a go, then hop over there now. I’m MysticTris if you want to hear what I’m playing on the ‘wheels of steel’. I’ve adopted the persona of a Terry-Thomas character circa 1955. I’m not really sure why…

Belatedly Twittering On...

I’m beginning to worry that I’m not surfing the interactive zeitgeist. Indeed, I’m also concerned that I’m suffering from a shortage of memes. I’ve only just started using Twitter, for instance. I mean, talk about being late to join the party. Mind you, very few people I know use it, so there’s not much of a party going on. Does this mean they used it and then went away, having realised that it is essentially pointless?

For those even further behind than me, Twitter is a microblogging service that allows you to tell people what’s going on in your life in 140 characters or less. It appeals to me as a copywriter, since economy with words is a skill to which I aspire. However, if you haven’t got a big network of people linked to you all doing the same thing it gets boring very quickly; the online equivalent of muttering to yourself on the tube. This is always the risk with any online community – lack of critical mass. If you could peek at what random unconnected people are up to in an immediate way, instead of having to search for people, it may be more fun.

Having said that, I like the widget that you’ll see on the right – particularly as I can feel less guilty about not posting on my blog…