This article was published on December 9, 2011

Think 140 characters is short? Try 7 words with nanoblogging service Hycku


Think 140 characters is short? Try 7 words with nanoblogging service Hycku
Nancy Messieh
Story by

Nancy Messieh

Lesotho-born and raised, Nancy Messieh, The Next Web's Middle East Editor, is an Egyptian writer and photographer based in Cairo, Egypt. Fol Lesotho-born and raised, Nancy Messieh, The Next Web's Middle East Editor, is an Egyptian writer and photographer based in Cairo, Egypt. Follow her on Twitter, her site or Google+ or get in touch at [email protected]

How often have you sat there re-working a tweet, cutting out words, shortening them, and rearranging your sentence so you could make it fit into 140 characters? It can be pretty tough to get a full idea across in such few words. According to the guys behind Hycku, that’s no big deal.

Now that microblogging services have become run of the mill, enter the newest, shortest form of online interaction – nanoblogging. Hycku updates are limited to 255 characters – sounds like it’s more than Twitter right? Don’t be fooled. Along with the 255 character limit comes a 7 word limit – in the spirit of the popular and very short poetic form – the haiku.

At the moment  the options and settings are pretty sparse. You can add a profile pic, and simultaneously update your status on Facebook and Twitter, and even add an image to your update. Hycku is also fully searchable. Interaction with other users is exactly the same as Twitter’s – you can follow other users and send them private messages.

If you want to share a link in your update, the link will go towards the 7 word limit, but if you want to add an image, you don’t have to sacrifice one of your seven words in exchange. Images show up inline in both your personal timeline and the public timeline.

How popular nanoblogging is going to be has yet to be seen. The word limit is pretty restrictive. Add to that the fact that people simply don’t need another social network between Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and certainly not one with such stringent limitations – we’re left wondering if Hycku is DOA.

Other microblogging services like Jaiku, Identica and Plurk simply couldn’t compete with Twitter and eventually faded into obscurity.

There is one way that Hycku could potentially set itself apart from other social networks by living up to its name and becoming a niche option by becoming a social network for poets. While Twitter has become home to some incredibly creative micropoems, complete with a hashtag of their own, Hycku could end up being a huge online repository of modern day haikus.

What do you think of Hycku? Let us know in the comments.

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