future facts blog

Why twitter matters and how (UXCamp Berlin 2009) – the slideshow at slideshare.net

Shift to “nano conversations” and “micro user experience”

Why talk about microblogging in the context of a thematic barcamp (UXCamp Berlin 2009) about user experience, information architecture and interface design? Since I have written my thesis in information science (FU Berlin), I always have been interested in trends and innovation waves in the realm of media and information. We should not confuse the different trends in the mediasphere around microblogging, microformats and microcontents – but there is a metatrend to a more finegrained web and more finegrained and realtime interaction patterns. For example the twittersphere is the best environment for pandemic meme dynamics hopping from tweet to retweet. Users can discover other users sharing around the same tag / interest – reatlime, nearly without investing “search interaction”.

Twitter as a living search engine versus Google, the cold machine

In the googlesphere Google as the search engine has it’s merits, but it is always a starting point again and again – to put some query, select an item in the listing and so on. In the twitterverse the people are the living search engine – or still better: the discovery engine. So the user experience will change significantly in the next years.

From blogging as online diary to Emergent Sociality of microblogging

Microblogging is a really fascinating phonomenon, since it has a potential going far away from the root metaphor of blogging – the diary. In a sense it is the final deconstruction of writing a diary as a lonly, contemplative activity (with its special dignity) and opens up the possibilities of Emergent Sociality. In the twitterverse we see an unprcedented acceleration of adhoc “cloud building” of hypernetworked human beings around an issue, symbolized and glued together with a little word. That hashtag prefix # is as important as the identifier of the person as sender/receiver, follower/followee and her prefix @.

If you have not started to twitter up to now, don’t be afraid. Test it. It only makes sense to follow people of your interest – else your test will definitely fail. Just follow – you can unfollow someone at any time with no argument needed. My twitter name is @wschroll. Read the rest of this entry »