The Launch of Twitter’s Analytics Service
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, 2014/09/08

Twitter has launched a new analytics service. Here's the announcement. Brian Kelly: "the service provides statistics on tweets (potential impressions, engagement and engagement rate). Additional tabs provide information on followers (changes in the numbers of followers and profiles of their gender, location and interests) and Twitter cards." I'm not sure I even want this. Reading my analytics made me feel like I did when I had Klout, bemoaning the fact that I had 0 interactions today (when I should be celebrating) and striving to make the number bigger, as if it mattered. But if I did want this, honestly, I'd want it for my whole network, not just network. But that means Twitter would have to share, and I don't think it knows how to do that any more.

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Twitter, algorithms, and digital dystopias
Doug Belshaw, 2014/09/08

So what happened after people exchanged their RSS readers for services like Twitter and Facebook? "What’s so problematic about all of this, of course, is that whereas we used to be in charge of our own reading habits, we’ve outsourced that to algorithms. That means software with shareholders is dictating our information environment." A bunch of good links on the topic: " Don’t Be a Platform Pawn by Alan Levine led me to Frank Chimero’s From the Porch to the Street and then onto a post about The Evaporative Cooling Effect which, in turn, cites this paper." p.s. Can I say I knew this would happen? Of course I can.

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Something is rotten in the state of…Twitter
Bonnie Stewart, The theoryblog, 2014/09/08

"Will my dissertation end up being about the Twitter that was, rather than whatever it is in the process of becoming?" Bonnie Stewart looks at the decline of Twitter not just as an isolated event but as part of a wider pattern. "Twitter As We Knew It (TM) as a representation of an era, a kind of practice. At the core, it is about the ebbing away of networked communications and participatory culture," she writes. But more: "The sense of participatory collective – always fraught – has waned as more and more subcultures are crammed and collapsed into a common, traceable, searchable medium." Image: The Atlantic, A Eulogy for Twitter.

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Twitpic is shutting down
Press Release, TwitPic, 2014/09/08

I don't know whether Twitpic is actually shutting down or whether this is just posturing to get Twitter to pack down, but either way it demonstrates how we can't depend on web service providers to have our interests in mind when they begin fighting (as they always do) among themselves. "Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API," writes Twitpic, which has been operating since 2008. "We do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe whole heartedly is rightfully ours. Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic." I'll have to rescue my Twitpics, I guess.

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Malawi app 'teaches UK pupils 18 months of maths in six weeks'
Spencer Kelly, BBC News, 2014/09/08

There's all kinds of ways this can be an overstatement and that the results in widespread practice would be nowhere near the test case (or not long-lasting, nor not transferable, or some such thing). But then there's this: "What was so incredible was that in both countries we saw the same gain. One week of working on the iPads for 30 minutes a day [equalled] three months of formal education," she told me. "We were amazed." So, OK, this is what we were expecting from e-learning once upon a time, so maybe they've figured out math. But I'm suspicious, because it's an iPad project for Malawi, and why would they select iPads for Malawi, the most expensive tablets out of the box? But hey - maybe.

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