#essential character

[irl-loading-screens]

Donald "Essential Character" Trump has survived yet another attempt on his life after shots were fired at the White House Correspondents Dinner hours ago.

[readwritewatchrepeat]

I don't think people appreciate this character enough, or how perfectly she anchored the whole series. I was planning to do a TVD rewatch, but maybe I'll just skip the line and rewatch The Originals instead. Even knowing how things ended up, I would still love to revisit this character and her universe again.

[elascity]

#RIPTwitter: Why Twitter’s Change Matters

BuzzFeed broke the news Friday that Twitter would be changing the algorithm of its social network from the currently used chronological ordering to something more akin to Facebook. The change is “opt-in,” as of now, the really the writing has been on the wall for some time, but that hasn’t stopped #RIPTwitter from trending. While the “opt-in” of the process was probably instigated to allay concerns — and some “reasonable” Twitter voices have noted this — it doesn’t change the fact that this is a fundamental change to the platform.

To put this into some context, in my Technologies of Communication class, we discuss the idea of a medium having an “essential character.” Brooke Erin Duffy does a great job discussing how “the Internet” has disrupted what we see as the essential character in traditional mass media forms — namely magazines. Convergence culture had worked to combine the forms in which we communicate.

But here’s where it gets murky.

The “Internet” is not one medium; just as social media or social network sites are not all the same — despite the phrasing as such. The equivalent would be to suggest everything made of paper — newspapers, magazines and books — are all they same. They might use the same resource, but each is vastly different. Books are long form and (usually) thought out; magazines relay on glossy pictures and newspapers aim to be timely.

Likewise, each site — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn — used the same “resource” in the Internet, but works in specific ways. Facebook is reliant upon likes and what the company believes users want to see. For example, nearly everyday I’m treated to a “memory” with my friends from undergrad since we’ve both been on Facebook — and in conversation with each other — from the start at my school.

Twitter in comparison works as a real-time feed, which is why it works for things such as live tweeting events and/or discussions around television shows. Try reading Twitter during an episode of Scandal without reading spoilers — it’s nearly impossible.

By changing the algorithm, Twitter is changing its essential character — its chronology. It doesn’t matter that it’s opt-in; if any sizable population on Twitter takes the company up on the change, the network will be vastly changed. What receive will change and, as a matter of course, what we project to others will change. Some people will get priority over others in our feeds and not everything will be created equal, as it is now.

Maybe this change will make Twitter more valuable. Or maybe Twitter users will not opt-in and the altered version will quietly die.

Likewise, we can debate whether this is good or bad thing.

But, my point remains that this has the potential to make Twitter a vastly different place.