Vocabulary-wise, is the following correct?
microblog – generic term for any microblog.
micro.blog – the specific term for the apps and website @manton started.
Anything else?
@jackwellborn Here, I mostly refer to my site hosted by @Manton as my Microblog. For generic, I would use the lower case. I rarely use the dot. I seem to recall in the beginning that putting in the dot would make it come out formatted as a link. Or maybe I'm thinking of Dave Winer's software. In any case, I dropped the dot for that reason. But I don't consider myself an arbiter of correct usage and when I looked in Strunk & White, it wasn't in there!
@jackwellborn I tend to use the dot to mark out Manton's stuff -- the network, hosted sites -- and then either microblog or micro blog to refer to blogs for short (or less substantial) posts.
@simonmumbles @jackwellborn @Ron I think it’s important to use the . to refer to things related to this Mantonverse, because (eventually) search engines will be able to better differentiate, e.g., “Using WordPress for Micro.blog” and “Using WordPress for microblog”—and even now, humans can at least differentiate the two in somewhat undifferentiated search results if the period is present….
Also, Manton always seems to capitalize the M, so “Micro.blog” for this and “microblog” (or other non-.-containing variation) for the generic.
@smokey You make a good point and I'm now watching Manton on this. Indeed, today he referred to Micro.blog. I'll try out the switch.
I'm glad I was able to cheer you up a bit about Vonnegut. :)