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Twitter: A Case Study

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Twitte Rp

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Case Study: Twitter

I did a social media case-study on the popular social networking site, Twitter.

The social objects of twitter include tweets (mini-status updates), direct messages to other twitter users, the layout and design of the user-profile, pictures, favorites, lists (usually chronological lists of followers and/or people you follow), trending topics (topics showing up regularly in what people are generally tweeting), followers and following (who follows your tweets and whose tweets you follow), and retweets (a message that multiple people have tweeted, usually some kind of news announcement.)

Some of Twitter's relational practices include tweeting, following, search (where you search for key words in other people's tweets), find (to look up other people on twitter), upload (pictures of yourself, or for your layout, also you can provide a link to other sites, such as a blog), mention (mention other tweeters in your tweets by first writing @ then the username of who you wish to mention), message, unfollow, block, and report.

Users make knowledge known on twitter through tweeting regularly throughout the day, to update their followers on what they are doing. It's useful for people who are interested in what the celebrities are doing, since many of them do have twitter. The "retweet" feature is useful in getting information that multiple people have posted, such as news blurbs or anything else various people would find interesting. False rumors get spread easily on twitter though, so its important to make sure of sources. I determined this by playing with twitter for a week or so, and following people and seeing how easily knowledge is transferred. Many people have twitter hooked up to their phone, and can literally tweet from wherever whenever.

Users attribute value through their interaction on this site through how many people are following them, or many people they are following. It can also depend on how much activity is on the twitter, the more valuable are the ones that users frequently update. The users info section, layout, and picture can also attribute value, and add personality to their twitter. Social objects such as lists and favorites also attribute value, and add personality.

The social objects of twitter very successfully bring people together, in my opinion. Users can be constantly updated on what their friends or favorite celebrities are up to, depending on how often they tweet. It connects huge amounts of people very effectively. I determined this by playing around with it, and following random celebrities. Never having used it before, I was surprised at what a detailed look at a random celebrities day I received (Rainn Wilson from the office, btw). News travels amazingly fast on twitter, as hundreds of people can receive one tweet at once, immediately retweet and send it to hundreds of new people, and so on and so on. It is definitely an effective way bring people from all over the world together.

Video Progress

My group and I haven't actually started filming or putting together our movie yet, but we had a pretty detailed outline planned out of how it is going to go. 

Our dramatic question is, "What is the soundtrack to your life?" We are going to interview three people about their music taste, and how music affects or factors into their day to day happenings. Basically, we are going to have them describe their own life's soundtrack. 

We are going to edit in some overlapping tracks, with shots of lots of different people listening to ipods walking through campus, on the shuttle, working, etc. 

I'm really excited about the project. We have a bunch of cool ideas that I'm looking forward so see play out as we start to get our hands dirty. 

Conversing about The Conversations

After reading the first chapter of Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations, a series of interviews with expert film editor Walter Murch, my appreciation for the hours of work and compilation that go into the making of any film has definitely grown. 

It would have been a lot easier to follow the dialogue had I seen many of the movies they were talking about. Even so, I found the first chapter really interesting. 

It's amazing how many different people contribute to the whole film making process. I had never even considered the editor as a major component, which he or she clearly is. 

I also found it really interesting that women were largely the first editors in the film business. It makes sense, though, that editing would originally be considered a woman's task, similar to knitting and stitching. They cut and weave the film together in a delicate process. Its cool that woman had such an influential role so early on, even if they did not get proper recognition for it. 

Reading The Conversations made me eager to go out and rent a whole bunch of movies. It also made me eager to start testing out my film-making skills in the upcoming project. Hopefully my group and I are up to the task. 

Blog-Critique

I just looked at my blog for the first time from a critical perspective. Some things I definitely need to work on: 

editing out text that doesn't need to be there. I can be really wordy in places where I don't need to be. I should also work on the structure of some of my posts, which are just blobs of intimidating text on the page. 

citing/providing mentioned links: I mention videos and other websites in several of my posts. I need to remember to provide links, making it easy for readers to click and see exactly what I am talking about. 

I definitely need to add more pictures, its looking a little bare now1

I'm debating switching up the font and or font color, but am unsure. Any thoughts? 

Webby Winners

I spent a long time browsing the Webby award winners the other night. My favorite was definitely The Onion, a mock online magazine, which won the webby for humor: Home | The Onion - America's Finest News Source. I especially liked the "opinion" section, which has a bunch of blurbs, all ridiculous and hilarious. I definitely recommend browsing the site if you're looking for a laugh. 

I also really liked dreamgrove.org, which won the Webby for netart. The whole site is devoted to people's dreams, broken up 

into categories like "hope" and "anger", and a lot of others.

 The design of the site is really cool; each dream is represented by a colored dot on the screen, which you click to read.

 Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas 

is another cool site, which won the people's choice webby for netart. The site is a blank canvas which you drag your mouse across, splattering paint over. Click the mouse to change the color. Its easy to use and extremely entertaining.

 I've never stopped to appreciate websites in such a way before, coming from a critical standpoint. I am developing an appreciation for the work that goes into developing and designing such intricate websites.