By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Creepiest New Corner Of Instagram: Role-Playing With Stolen Baby Photos
Blake Miller, Fast Company, 2014/09/24
I'm, not so sure it's as creepy as Fast Company makes it out to be, because it's really nothing more than fantasy families, but it's noteworthy enough to mention here because of the obvious overlap that is possible with learning and technology. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Twitpic is shutting down
Press Release, TwitPic, 2014/09/08
I don't know whether Twitpic is actually shutting down or whether this is just posturing to get Twitter to pack down, but either way it demonstrates how we can't depend on web service providers to have our interests in mind when they begin fighting (as they always do) among themselves. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Something is rotten in the state of…Twitter
Bonnie Stewart, The theoryblog, 2014/09/08
"Will my dissertation end up being about the Twitter that was, rather than whatever it is in the process of becoming?" Bonnie Stewart looks at the decline of Twitter not just as an isolated event but as part of a wider pattern. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Twitter, algorithms, and digital dystopias
Doug Belshaw, 2014/09/08
So what happened after people exchanged their RSS readers for services like Twitter and Facebook? "What’s so problematic about all of this, of course, is that whereas we used to be in charge of our own reading habits, we’ve outsourced that to algorithms. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Pupils to Study Twitter and Blogs in Primary Shake-Up
A few people have mentioned this Guardian article and it was mentioned in our conversation yesterday. The gist is that "Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war... the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes." The negative reaction is not surprising (though misguided). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Why Use Twitter? Notes for My Journalism Expo Twitter Training
I'm doing a social media workshop tomorrow for the Atlantic Journalism Awards conference here in Moncton - the local newspaper called it the 'Tweeting Workshop' - and so this item seemed like a good thing to clip and save. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Twitter Is Dead
Karoli, odd time signatures, April 8, 2013
I personally think Twitter has long since passed its best-before date, but now I think the realization is dawning on wider circles. It happened with Twitter transitioned from being a sharing site to being a marketing site. The failure becomes when some of the marketing begins to smell, well, off. For example, as Karoli observes, Michelle Malkin's 'Twitchy' site. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Twitter users forming tribes with own language, tweet analysis shows
Jason Rodrigues, The Guardian, March 16, 2013
I have read and written variously over the years about people using artifacts as words to create their own languae of discourse within a community, such as the community of geologists or the community of tax lawyers. This articl in te Guardian reinforces that idea, describing community-specific jargon that emerges in Twitter communities. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Emergent Learning: Social Networks and Learning Networks
I submitted this item as a discussion starter to the Online Social Networks Conference 2005 conference and it will form a framework for my talk this week at Northern Voice. I include it here because it provides another perspective on the material I produce in this newsletter. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Producing Social Network Environments
They told me my philosophy courses would never be useful, but this could have come straight from my metaphysics class: "People don’t exist in environments, they exist in themselves and their semilattice-esque relationships with other actors (communities, individuals, spaces, inanimate objects...)." Why is this important? When we are creating a learning system, we are creating a mechanism that allows people to interact with, to experience, and to learn from the world. More...