At the beginning of each semester of my class, I tell my students that they’re going to leave with a skillset that helps them negotiate human interaction with social technology. I’ve sat up at night, pondering the value of such a skillset. More than anything, the Buzz fiasco has driven home the point that we need interdisciplinary information professionals that can work with teams in negotiating the social implications of their tools. These are the students I’m working with, and I wonder how Buzz would have rolled differently if their voices were brought to the table.
via fstutzman.com
Twitter is a special case. As beautiful and real as I think it is, the code doesn’t reflect the depth of the social experience. They keep losing/erasing/not finding what you’re building. You’re always a stranger with a few days worth of tweets to Twitter, even if you’ve used it for years as an important pathway for defining and refining what you’re becoming and the stories you tell yourself and how that makes you what you are.