No, not anytime soon (I hope?).
But maybe, sometime in the future, it could always be a possibility, especially since some of the other publishing platforms are experimenting with it.
For example, Tumblr has gotten a lot of publicity and facetime in the WordPress community as being a model to be examined and analyzed in terms of fluidity of publishing and simplicity of UI/UX. To be honest, the Tumblr interface and overall experience isn’t something to laugh at – it’s incredible.
I believe that Tumblr poses an interesting threat to WordPress long-term – and if they continue to gain traction it could start finding footholds in WordPress-dominated industries and markets if we don’t continue to push the boundaries ourselves.
Even now, with Babblr, a real-time chat client for Tumblr, they are experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what it means to be social, what it means to publish content, and what it means to engage in and develop online communities.
Sure, it’s not ground-breaking and unique, but it is interesting that it sits squarely on top of the Tumblr API:
Babblr isn’t overly complex software. It’s not that much different from other on-site chat clients, in fact. The difference is that it’s built on top of the Tumblr API, and through a Chrome extension launching in a few weeks, it will integrate directly into your Tumblr dashboard.
After authenticating with Tumblr, the Babblr interface shows you a list of followers and those you’re following, and lets you initiate instant messaging-like chats with others on Babblr. You can also organize your followers into groups, which is useful for those with larger communities, or who just want to have more directed conversations.
It’s going to be free to download at first but they’ll charge $.99 after it starts to scale (possibly out of control).
Again, I don’t see WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress.org sites coming with this out of the box but it’s worth keeping a pulse on what’s testing the waters of online systems and technology around publishing.
The thought of having it on even this site makes me cringe a little – but I cringed the first time I encountered Twitter as well. Ah, times have changed, haven’t they?
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