Contributed by Asim Zeeshan

Twitter is the popular micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read short 140 character messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are also known as followers. Twitter is not just the popular micro-blogging service among its users but their competitors envy it too. In the recent past, we have seen Facebook copying some of the privacy settings from Twitter and enabling the SMS-access to its services, just like twitter.

Now Yahoo has introduced a beta service called Meme! Although in a limited invitation-only launch. the service seems promising.

It has a smart and simple look with a great user interface. This is the same reason why Twitter is such a bug success; they kept things very simple and accessible. Why Yahoo wanted a clone of twitter? You may ask. The answer is, it’s NOT. Although the Idea has been stolen from twitter but unlike twitter it supports Images, Videos, Audios and Text posts.

Let’s have a look inside Meme!

The dashboard (the first page that you see after you login) is pretty simple and easy to understand. The updates from your subscribers (or the people you FOLLOW, same concept as Twitter) are shown here. The latest ones are on top. With each update you see author’s display picture, date and time when this post was posted (just like twitter) but then there are more options that Twitter does not have. You will notice that there are two buttons on the right hand side, one for REPOST (same as Re-tweet in Twitter) to again post the same image, video, audio or text and share it with your subscribers. These is also a REPOST COUNTER, it informs how many times this post has been REPOSTED. Pretty simple!

The toolbar is self explanatory too. Click on the kind of post you are going to give to your subscribers.

Post a Text Message. It has a 2000 character limit (pretty huge) if you are posting a text update.

Post a photo message

Post a video update

Comparing Meme with Twitter

Meme has successfully translated the success of Twitter and the power of a blog to create a new service that has the ease of sharing content and maintaining a blog at the same time. We are yet to see how it’s welcomed in the online community after its public launch.

Restrictions / Policies

Meme has restrictions unlike Twitter to restrict its usage for Cloned, SEO, Marketing, Pirated and Automatically generated content accounts.

Related Links:

1. Yahoo Meme! Guidelines (http://meme.yahoo.com/help/guidelines/)
2. Yahoo Meme! http://meme.yahoo.com/
3. Twitter http://www.twitter.com/

About the Author:

Asim Zeeshan is currently working as Senior Software Engineer in a renowned software house of Lahore, Pakistan. He has more than nine years of experience working in PHP and other technologies. He is a social media addict and an occasional blogger. A PRO GEEK, collecting every new gadget in the market. If Asim does not know how it works, then it is not worth knowing.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), on Thursday, promulgated new regulations by the name of “Protection from Spam, Unsolicited, Fraudulent and Obnoxious Communication Regulations, 2009”. The regulations main objective is to protect the Telecom consumers from spam, fraudulent, unsolicited and obnoxious communications including calls and SMS.

They will attempt to control SPAMs, by making the Telecom operators set-up standard operating procedures (SOPs) within a given frame of time. The Telecom operators are now required to actively create procedures for blacklisting of subscribers, whose subscription have been terminated due to the above mentioned fraudulent activities. These lists will be required by PTA, within the next sixty days, from the day, of official notification of these regulations.

In order to avoid receiving unnecessary and unwanted calls by the subscribers from telemarketers, the Telecom operators , under this regulation, are also expected to establish “Do Not Call Register” (DNCR) within ninety working days of the official notification. Under the regulation they will also be handling the consumer complaint mechanism in order to facilitate them. The Telecom operators will also be expected to educate their subscribers and the general public about the available preventive measures.

Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen said that PTA has taken the feedback of all the concerned organizations before the promulgation of the new regulations. They have been propagated by the telecom regulators in order to safeguard the rights and interests of the consumers. These regulations are expected to facilitate the consumers and PTA expects that all telecom operators remain committed and follow the regulations effectively.