Scenario: TwitterReflection

Summary	What does my Twitter feed say about me?
Group / workshop	Digital Identities	Status	seed
Project details...	Rhizome

Situation

What is the setting for this scenario? Describe the educational, technological and institutional setup.

Context: using Twitter. Twitter is a simple service, the use of which is often referred to by its users as microblogging or lifestreaming. Small snippets of content (140 characters) sent out to anyone in your community of followers. The secret of its success is perhaps its simplicity which has allowed a high degree of flexibility in the ways that it can be exploited. A host of other services now take Twitter data and allow different views on Twitter streams and different aggregation methods.

Task

What is the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?

How do I know if my twitter feed is being 'inappropriately' aggregated? Or how should I react to sites that turn a dynamic activity into one feels more that static? Viewing my Twitter timeline in different contexts makes me feel rather uncomfortable about what it reflects about my identity. I like the the feeling of presence and being short and personal in tweets but feel a constraint where I wonder how much I should control what I actually say.

Patterns

Identify patterns appropriate for the situation and the task. How would they inform the solution?

A modified version of the "3 Hats" Pattern

Solution

Describe a possible solution derived from the patterns you selected.

The solution may be more of a social one rather than technical one. A modified version of the "3 Hats" Pattern in this case would mean the author listening to one person telling another what they they read into the Twitter stream and what they understand about the author from the trail that is being left. This has roots in a particular case-story "You never quite know who you are" where the author was surprised to hear a friend's interpretation of an accidental public tweet that should have been a private one. This relates to the idea of consulting one's trusted community (or core community) … and gaining a fresh perspective from those who exist within your core network.

Expected Results

Concrete, measurable criteria for success.

Lessons Learned

what have you learnt from writing this scenario?

That not all solution are technical. Some problems can be solved using techniques that might be as simple as provoking a change in perspective.

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.