Moblogging

While MMS was gaining traction, it took the ability for camera phones to publish images online to cement their popularity. Although MMS was great for sharing among friends and family, people wanted to share in bigger and more open networks. Thus this led to the rise of mobile blogging, or moblogging. Moblogs are blogs accessible on the web that are updated from a mobile device. Moblogging favors quick and short messages, making pictures an effective means of communication. With the ability to write, record, and upload from a single device, users took to the medium to post quick updates about their lives and doings.

While moblogs have been associated with the banal of everyday life, the political and journalistic agency of the medium was readily apparent to its users. During events like the 2006 London Underground bombings and the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, camera phones beat traditional press by pushing their images online to moblogs. As they were cut out from the affected areas, journalists suddenly had to look to ordinary users for on-site coverage. News outlets made the images digestible for a greater public, but now amateurs were conducting the actual field reporting, creating questions about whether these acts could be considered journalism.

Although moblogs have fallen out of favor after having been supplanted by newer social media, they represent a pivotal moment in how networked cameras have changed our understanding of the world. Like the personalized web pages of the GeoCities era, users took command of their identities and took publicity to new heights by sharing themselves and their worlds at an accelerating pace. Though moblogs live on in a limited fashion, their spirit carries over to services like Twitter that place a greater emphasis on real-time sharing.

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