I've seen them called microblogs and miniblogs and social bookmarking services and social media and lifestreaming services, and maybe they are a little of "all of the above." Each gives you a way to let your "friends" or "followers" know what you are doing at any given moment in time (now THAT would have to be a really good friend!). Great for moms and grandmas who always want all the daily details that lurk in between phone calls and IMs and emails. The details of life.

Also great for business applications - imagine a food business with a chef who creates new entrees weekly. Customers/followers could track her progress in the test kitchen as she moves from one experiment to the other. Then they invite their friends to follow along, and next thing you know everyone's dying to find out whether the mango chutney or the tuscan tomato sauce wins out in the race to grace the pork tenderloin.

The two most popular mini-blog sites are Twitter (BuzzMarker.com rank #9) and the upstart Friendfeed (BuzzMarker.com rank #22). Some predict Twitter's demise with the rise of Friendface. One guy posted that he's adding friends on FF at nearly twice the pace of Twitter, claiming that their system is better at facilitating links of that nature than is Twitter. Others say Twitter's traffic and infrastructure problems (service outages) will gig them in the end. Still others say "How the heck will these guys ever make any money?"

All those questions will be answered as these two battle it out in the coming months. Traffic is rising at both sites, so it's likely there's room for them both.