Tuesday, Apr 28, 2009    Text size: 

Sound familiar?

Quub.com, which is currently in beta-testing, is trying to position itself as the MTV2 of the microblogging world. Fans of the original music video network MTV may remember the channel's slow progression away from showing music videos in favor of reality shows. The network launched MTV2 in 1996 to show nothing but music videos.

The analogy with Twitter kicks in here. The current hot-ticket site online originally launched with a similar mission statement, but has since evolved into a platform for rumination, promotion and information-sharing.

"Most people tend to ignore this question ["what are you doing?"] entirely, tweeting about anecdotes, their favorite songs, and any number of other things totally unrelated to what they’re actually doing," tech pundit Jason Kincaid wrote for TechCrunch.com. "It’s become a service for entertainment, news, and conversations, where those presence statuses (messages like “I’m at work”) have become frowned upon for being dreadfully boring."

An informal survey of adult-industry Twitter users indicated that most professionals use the service to network and keep an eye on the goings-on in the business.

According to online reports, Quub.com will combine Twitter's original use with geolocating technology that will help friends keep track of each others' actions and location.

In addition, Quub.com will offer users more control on their status updates, including a groups function that will let them send out status updates to specific groups of friends.