[Air-L] Twitter Re-Design

Mary K. Bryson mary.bryson at ubc.ca
Wed Nov 11 09:39:24 PST 2009


RE: Why Retweet works the way it does

http://evhead.com/2009/11/why-retweet-works-way-it-does.html
<BY: Evan Williams (born March 31, 1972) is an American entrepreneur who has
founded several Internet companies, including Pyra Labs (creator of
weblog-authoring software Blogger) and Twitter, of which he is currently
CEO.>

I think it's interesting that Ev <creator of Twitter> misses the most valued
function of the retweet <to this user>, which is the linkage between the
retweeter and the original author of the RT tweet - the creator of Twitter's
new modification of retweet removes the citation factor - The current
Twitter syntax of say, Richard Smith retweeting something about surveillance
and blogging makes me follow a link about say, blogging, precisely because
Richard Smith is citing it. For the URL simply to appear in my InBox from ZX
would be meaningless. This is a good example of where a tool designer fails
to talk to users about what is good about the actual design and what would
then, be lost in the supposed "improvement".

Mary
-- 
Dr. Mary K. Bryson, Professor and Director, Network of Centers and
Institutes in Education (NCIE) & Center for Cross-Faculty Inquiry (CCFI),
Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia
Archive: http://ubc.academia.edu/MaryKBryson

CCFI: Innovation Works Here
http://ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/



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