July 9, 2009
dear clusterflock
Andrew and I have talked a lot about how to integrate some of the activity that is generated outside clusterflock (twitter, flickr, facebook) so that it flavors some of what goes on here. Do you think this is desirable? Useful? Important?
Do you see a way to do it?
Thoughts and suggestions welcome.
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15 Responses to “dear clusterflock”
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Definitely desirable, I’m still unconvinced about the usefulness of Twitter unless your in the midst of a revolution, and I’m unsure what Facebook integration would add, but I’m interested to see what y’all come up with.
{I can say, “y’all”, right, despite being British?}
I’m still pondering this question.
There is a purity and a focus to clusterflock that I am somewhat loathe to relinquish, if that makes sense.
Me, I generally cross-post suitable clusterflock/Flickr posts.
I tweet intermittently.
Every six months or so, I get back into Facebook, and then I remember why I backed away from it. My Flickr posts do go automatically to Facebook, but that is pretty much it these days.
Twitter I use:
(1) To reassure people I am alive.
(2) In the hope of fast-breaking news about a new photo/video toy I covet — WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AVAILABLE THIS WEEK!
In the event of a revolution, I would also tweet.
I don’t, but I’m not sure I’m properly picturing what you have in mind.
Sincerely,
The “No” Lady
An aside to Chris: When you Englishers say “y’all”, many of us Amurricans think it is just so danged cute, so please persist.
Just don’t use it incorrectly. Do not employ it as though it were a second-person singular. It is a collective form of address only.
But you probably know that.
Cheers Sheila!
I think I’d only use it in the hallowed halls of Flockerton, as it seems to be a pretty common occurrence here.
Which got me to thinking about words I only use in the company of certain people. And I just realised the rest of this post would probably be unfathomably filthy, so I think I’ll stop there.
Yes.
Twitter has proven itself quite useful in the event of revolution, but aside from that, I don’t get it. I can’t quite wrap my brain around facebook either, but that might be because I’m an antisocial dork. Now flickr, isn’t there already integration when flockers post photos that link to their flickr account? Those were thoughts. Here’s a suggestion: Chris, sprinkle in a few y’alls wherever possible.
Yeah, Chris. Give us the odd “y’all”.
I waited a bit to answer this, mostly because I felt like I already gave my opinion in person after the ’stock. But then I remembered not all flockers were present, so I should speak up:
I’m not the coder I used to be (it’s been four years since I coded anything at all and technology …changes), but I know RSS feeds can be manipulated. Right now we can use the friends’ timeline feed for Twitter and the contacts’ uploads feed for Flickr to compile the activity of flockers offsite.* (NB I don’t care about Facebook even if we do communicate over there from time to time.)
So, this basically proves that we can compile our offsite activities. How is another question. There was talk of incorporating photo uploads and tweets into the blog itself, as individual posts. I won’t support that idea because I’m not a fan of noise. And since I read everyone’s Twitters and check everyone’s Flickrs on my own time, this would severely affect my comprehension of clusterflock. I believe in sidebars though… an example of how easy and inoffensively we can display our tweeting activity is on my infrequent personal blog (scroll down, on the right). If I could add that to a VOX (which is to say, unfriendly to widgets) page, I’m sure we can add something similar to clusterflock.
The reason I’m excited about adding our offsite creativity to this place is because it shapes who we are. And doesn’t this site try to reflect who we are by what we care about, what we hate, what we laugh at? I can’t even count the number of times I’ve openly guffawed right here at my office desk because of Twitter conversations between India and Andrew or Mike and Mary. And if we add some kind of Flickr widget, then there’ll be a consistent stream of Sheila and Cooper that I could really get used to seeing here. Promoting their efforts.
I’ll stop here because this is practically a five paragraph essay, and just as tiring too.
* I’m pretty sure to look at either of those feeds raw, you’ll need to know the login details. Andrew Simone can help.
Kelsey, I think that’s what I’m thinking of / looking for exactly. A way to integrate at least the tweets so that we get a sense of the communication / life / funny that happens outside the site but doesn’t interfere with the basic coherence of the site.
Can you, or anyone, think of a way to integrate tweets (into clusterflock) so that it would be graceful and unobtrusive? Perhaps the way you’ve done it on your site would work.
Well, I figured out how to get what I have on my site showing the conversations between folks. But… it doesn’t show who’s saying what. Ha! That’s kind of, um, useful.
I’ll keep working.
I don’t have a real blog anymore to test anything out on, but I’m pretty sure that this is what we can install.
See, so here’s the thing—I know I’m always pissing on the clusterparade on this kind of question, but I do not want to have my tweets on Clusterflock.
When I want to post something to Clusterflock, I post it here. When I don’t, I don’t. Yes, they’re both public, but there’s a much smaller audience on Twitter. Knowing that my tweets will show up over here, too, will eliminate that distinction and have a chilling effect on twittering for me.
What I like about the idea of a badge/gadget/widget/fuckit is that tweets don’t noisy up the rest of our clusterflock experience. Which means they may not even be noticed -— especially not by anyone scanning this blog by RSS. There’s probably only room for ~10 tweets at a time in a sidebar. So with the way we all yammer over on Twitter, I’m pretty sure any particular tweet would be live for, at most, ~two daytime (~five nighttime) hours.
This fact, of course, makes the case that there may be little reason to add a badge/gadget/widget/fuckit at all.
Which is the other half of my response: I just don’t see the point.
it’s certainly not something we have to do. I sometimes feel out of the loop because I don’t have the time to tweet (interest in?). I hoped by integrating some of them, at least on the side, it would both add another layer to the site and bring some of the energy / quirkiness. I wouldn’t want anyone who didn’t want their tweets to appear to have to.