Rip.Mix.Feed Delicious + Twitter

• 9 years ago
• Posted in:Re: Module 4
• 3
• Author: jkdaina
• Tags: rip.mix.feed

Rip.Mix.Feed Delicious + Twitter
80 bookmarks on Delicious + 99 Tweets on Twitter = jkdMET

Earlier in the course, I compiled links onto a delicious feed at https://delicious.com/jkdaina. This created a repository of (ETEC540-tagged) content, which I hope can serve others in future courses and reduce duplication.

However, I found Delicious is not a very social platform, though it is meant to be. I am not an active member of the Delicious community but it’s a project that has had a bumpy past. As a possible reflection of a low user base, its Facebook page only has 20,000 likes. It’s an unfortunate situation for a wonderful tool, but it doesn’t appear to be where the audience is, no matter what its magic.

The content was therefore not necessarily being seen. My solution was to repurpose it onto a Twitter feed, https://twitter.com/jkdMET. Delicious and Twitter both afford searchable indexing by tagging; both have apps. However, Twitter has been a disruptive technology thanks to social tools and personalization. Furthermore, Twitter’s integration of multimedia (and recent introduction of tools such as Periscope for live streaming) has allowed it to stay relevant, while Delicious has remained text-based, which is a drawback in the world of hypermedia.

I had been meaning to launch a UBCMET-related Twitter handle for an #edtech feed, and this Rip.Mix.Feed extension exercise turned out to be the right opportunity. A preliminary search revealed that #etec540 didn’t appear to be a very active hashtag. The beauty and ease of Twitter is that no matter how much content is out there, specific hashtags zoom right in to areas and communities of focus.

By posting the course readings and tagging them on Twitter, students and interested visitors can find readings in one place, as well as subject-related re-tweets sprinkled throughout. Course tweets are labelled “Course content”; the rest are my own. I found tweeting from Delicious directly disappointing as links didn’t shorten automatically, so I did quite a bit of ‘manual’ shortening using bit.ly. That freed up space in each tweet to include more hashtags and personalized user handles for institutions, publications and authors, thereby informing them of my tweets. That can be a bit onerous, but it’s worth the effort to be social; I noticed likes, follows and re-tweets.

When I have some time, I will return to my first MET course to list and hashtag previous readings. I will continue to bookmark at Delicious, though its future is less certain. Eventually, both links will be connected to some kind of original blog. Twitter has potential drawbacks for broken links, limited space at 140 characters and limitations to freedom of expression in some countries. It too could go the way of any other network, but it claims to be steadily growing and appears to have staying power.

I have always viewed platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram as bookmarking tools (some more visual than others). In this space, l hope to connect to others across communities of common interest, and to each other.

Thanks,
Julia

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Sources:

Cheredar, T. (May 8, 2014). “Delicious, the once great social bookmarking site, has a new owner… again.” VentureBeat. Retrieved July 25, 2015: http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/08/delicious-the-once-great-social-bookmarking-site-has-a-new-owner-again/

Johnson, B. (September 28, 2011) “Oh, Delicious – Where did it all go so wrong?” GigaOm. Retrieved July 25, 2015: https://gigaom.com/2011/09/28/oh-delicious-where-did-it-all-go-so-wrong/

Sherr, I. (October 27, 2014). “Twitter’s user base keeps growing, particularly on mobile devices.” CNET. Retrieved July 25, 2015: http://www.cnet.com/news/twitters-users-base-keeps-growing-particularly-on-mobile-devices/