New Scientician

Updates from maedelmaedel RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• maedelmaedel 22:09 on August 5, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Twitter – more Wikipedia than your average Social Network 

  

  I stumbled over this short article today (http://mashable.com/2009/06/02/twitter-users-dont-tweet/), and it really caught my attention and made me think. I like the connection that is made. Twitter is more like Wikipedia than it is a average social network. First of all this puts things into perspective for me and draws a line between two different things – a social networks, being generally an aggregation of information about a subject, showcasing its characteristics, the likes and dislikes, collecting friends. And of course there is the whole interaction part, sharing news, chat and gossip. But in my experience most of the fun, incentive to participate and interest in facebook grow out of exhibitionism and pure nosiness. And then there is something different, whatever twitter actually is – not better or worse, but definitely different. It fuels the need and wish to put information out there, to share content no matter how deep or how superficial it may be. The author and its characteristics and ticks is of relatively no importance. What twitter is all about is sharing tiny bits of information, comments, quotes or most important links – leading to larger bits of information.

  Another study that recently came out – proving the earth shuddering report of a teen intern (http://bit.ly/19cNfm) about the social media usage of teens to be right. The report stated that teens are largely underrepresented on twitter (http://bit.ly/WqyxD). This seems to be due to two main issues. Firstly the fact that if you use twitter over your mobile service, charges do apply. This makes twitter simply not attractive to this certain age group. And secondly the possibility and platform to showcase yourself and your connection is not really the strength of twitter. So teens are largely underrepresented on this platform unlike on most other social networks.

  I am not a teen anymore and I also stopped engaging on facebook actively a while ago out of lack of interest. But there is something about twitter that is really attractive and almost addictive for me. Both ways of using twitter are very engaging for me, either passively following and sucking up all the information widespread and random at times, or focused and spot on at others. Or being active and sharing this one link that you just stumbled over and really want to put out there and share.

  The other fact the comparison of twitter with wikipedia is based on is the fact that most of the twitter users are actually inactive (http://bit.ly/WWtTY). Only 10% of the users are generating 90% of the content. You could now argue that twitter is a dead town with a few very loud left over people among corpses. Or you could see it as a core team of people who spread information and put it out there for everyone to see. And of course there is a lot of “I just fed my cat” tweets, but there is also a lot of valuable content and information-sharing going on.

  The analogy Twitter – wikipedia is of course is not completely accurate and spot on. But it puts twitter, as a new form of navigating and harvesting the web into a very interesting perspective. It makes it exciting to think about its future evolution and the implementations of it. Maybe the likely next step of development on this platform – the organisation and curation of the aggregated information and the evaluation of it – maybe this next step could be one of the first glimpses onto what comes next after newspapers disappear. This could be a completely new form of publishing and spreading f information.

  Of course the question of what will happen to journalism and where will it happen is still unsolved and I guess will be for a long while. Twitter can’t replace journalism, but it is for me already very much replacing the medium of a newspaper or magazine offline or online

  Twitter gives me my daily dose of solid information plus the daily overdose of random amazement. And by something simple as just linking to more and more new spots it works like constant associations in the human brain – generating new connections between neurons every day. I constantly stumble over new places, places to come back to, I follow new tweets, aggregate more information and in this way the net, my personal net expands constantly.

  I am not sure if Twitter is like Wikipedia, but it is definitely not your average social networking site.

  
   

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  

• maedelmaedel 22:34 on July 30, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Immigration as urban development tool – I like that! 

  

  A short remark on the article I stumble over recently on the influence immigrants from Asia have on the actual building structure of US suburbia (http://bit.ly/zPZlr ). This is a development that for sure is not all that new – many city centers in North America have seen developments like that since decades. Not only the wide range of ethnic areas like china towns and little indias are examples – but various forms of micro cosmos have developed  – mixing and changing the modern grid of big cities, increasing density and diversity – improving quality of life.

  But that now finally suburbs are starting to change through immigration, the Asian way of living and housing, plus the influence of asian money in this is interesting on many levels. Specially observing this development at a time when the US suburbia has been more or less identified as one of the major infrastructural problems of the states (and any country housing such structures). Its consuming space, resources, energy in ridiculous amounts and is therefor highly ineffective. In economical tough times like these are suburbs also are more and more unsustainable for the residents – starting from housing and the cost that come with a house, all the way to gas consumption due to long travel times to work, shopping, leisure…

  Suburbia as we know it is a dead concept, waiting for a fundamental reinvention…. maybe this is already happening. Ways of living and urban structure change constantly. High rises are built in former low rise areas, empty malls are filled with community centers and there are various plans for light rail networks using the existing infrastructure of highways. Still there is a long way to go definitely not easy to achieve.

  On my recent trip to Singapore I stumbled over an  interesting form of high density, high rise living. A form of housing common to most large cities in developed as in developing countries, normally bound to generate vast areas of lost, dead urban spaces. But something is different in Singapore, somehow it works here – the culture, the climate? Large part of the island are covered with housing projects – condominium high rises. Not special so far. But each of this building blocks is grouped around a perfectly well functioning food court – a “hawker center” how those out-door food stalls are called in Singapore – a row of shops and other amenities like community centers, doctors or a massage salon. This centers function like medieval town centers or Italian plazas – all you need for your daily life focused on one spot – multifunctional, interactive – alive. Of course the warm climate in Singapore makes outdoor living and therefor public spaces highly attractive, if not a necessity. Still this is a working model and one wonders what it would take to implement it in some of the worrying urban structure of our civilized world. A change of culture is needed – a change that seems to be more easily achieved by immigration movements than by public initiatives.  Immigration is for sure is not the only and the fastest way to system innovation in urban development – but it is for sure a very interesting catalyst – one to be watched. Immigration as urban development tool -  I like that!

  
   

• maedelmaedel 16:02 on July 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cities, maedelmaedel ( 2 ), Singapore, urbanism, zurich   

  Off to Asia’s Zürich – or so they say 

  Flying to Singapore tonight to meet up with smallcaps – Its my first time there and next to other reason I am also excited to go there to be able to make the camparison between Zürich and Singapore – Are they really that similar? When it comes to the usual benchmark studies like Mercer’s they are both frequent guest on the top spots for life quality and price. But they also both carry the image of being rather conservative, calm and just simply not the most exciting places in the world…. But after living in London for almost three years I know that excitment is not necessary the asset to look for when choosing a living and working location? But what is…?

  

  smallcaps is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • smallcaps 00:30 on July 15, 2009 Permalink

    i think Singapore is more like Asia’s Switzerland

• maedelmaedel 18:42 on July 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: maedelmaedel ( 2 )   

  hello world – here from zuerich, switzerland