Microblog
 

What is a microblog? What are its advantages and purpose?

Google it or look it up on wiki. There are plenty of hits available.
Or are you asking for a specific purpose?

It's called Twitter

Is Twitter the example. Or just one of many variations? With many intended or unintended purposes?

yes

This is really just bullshit terminology. Nobody says "microblog". It never caught on.

However, there is enormous interest in publishing smaller tidbits of data; and there is a huge ongoing battle to figure out how we are all going to do that, or if in fact we want to, and what it all means.

Way, way back in the day, this is what we used to do with our "busy" messages on ICQ. You had about the same amount of space as today (140 characters or so) to put some cute quip about what you were doing at that exact moment. The only difference was people had to right-click and choose to read them instead of having them delivered instantly.

Microblog = facebook status in 140 characters = <away> message = mini updates of details most don't care about.

Well, I follow twitter when something major is happening, ie: tahrir square or other fast moving situations.

I've always preferred macroblogs, such as Twatter.

There is some use in brevity...but the world is more complex than 140 characters. Twitter only really works as a massive link-sharing service, which it actually does quite well. So long as you have the correct desktop management program downloaded.

I thought a microblog was a frozen blog that you had to heat up (i.e. microwave) in order to read it.

no, that's a tw-itter.

I prefer microbogs, such as twat.

Microblogs are defined as how Chinese dissidants (ie al WeiWei) get around government censors. And yet still the censors have cleansed some microblogs in seconds.

For example, one dissident microblogged a cartoon. No text. It disappeared in but a minute. That means human intervention. So I am rather confused how many forms of 'microblogs' exist.

Those are transient blogs. Thoughts that exist in space and time for two seconds. Like my attention span. What?