Re:How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design
by TimothyFitz on Monday September 07, 2009 @11:20PM
(#810206)
You can see this principle at work in how 2ch/4chan's ephemeral nature shaped the behaviors of their users (and thus their culture).
Re:How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design
by novum on Tuesday September 08, 2009 @12:21AM
(#810263)
I don't think it's quite accurate to call Twitter ephemeral, though. All kinds of third-party services are trying to index and archive as many tweets as possible, plus there's always the possibility that Twitter will cut a more formal deal with Google (or any other search engine).
Plus, there have been numerous documented instances where deleted tweets can still be found by Twitter's own search engine.
In short, the old rule of thumb still applies: if you don't want it archived and indexed and preserved forever, don't put it online in the first place.
Re:How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design
by thwarted on Tuesday September 08, 2009 @04:12AM
(#810498)
It's the _perception_ of ephemeral, through the UI and the way twitter presents "real-time" (most recent first, difficult to scroll through older stuff, less than stellar search (at least compared to other services)).
The thing is that as human beings we need both fireproof digital libraries that can keep our memories safe, and the electronic equivalent of the floating world where the record of what was said evaporates with the morning dew.