Methods of communication have rapidly changed with the advent of digital technologies and, while this may seem to be stating the obvious, it goes beyond mere media distribution. A fundamental shift has occurred in the way that information is created and disseminated, a shift that could not have been predicted only a few years previously. But what, exactly, has changed?
Basically, users have become creators. It started with blogging—sites such as
Live Journal allowed users to upload their own content to a public page. In quick succession came
Wikipedia,
YouTube,
MySpace and
Facebook, creating a series of site that users could effectively create and view their own content without turning to a traditional source.
And now we have
Twitter. At two years old, it’s still a relative baby compared to the other social networking giants, but it’s growth has been massive (600% over the last 12 months). It combines both the appeal of text messaging and social networking by forcing users to only 140 characters per message, and becomes one of the first with true mobile integration. What results is a glut of content—millions of people all uploading their smallest and largest of moments.
For this brief, I decided to look at the way Twitter works as a public document. People are prepared, and are almost eager, to share their life to the faceless crowds of the internet. I wondered how they would react to having these personal stories shared in print. Printing something has an added impact—a level of perceived permanency that an internet document does not possess. In addition, by placing it on a large format poster, I hoped to replicate the public nature of posting on the internet by confronting viewers with a literal wall of text, while the typeface was chosen to reflect the origins of the content.
Most of the people I asked were initially reluctant to participate, until it was pointed out that their posts were already up for public viewing—by a larger audience.
Overall I'm happy with how it turned out—thanks to all of those who let me plunder their precious Twitter archives!
Methods of communication have rapidly changed with the advent of digital technologies and, while this may seem to be stating the obvious, it goes beyond mere media distribution. A fundamental shift has occurred in the way that information is created and disseminated, a shift that could not have been predicted only a few years previously. But what, exactly, has changed?
Basically, users have become creators. It started with blogging—sites such as Live Journal allowed users to upload their own content to a public page. In quick succession came Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, creating a series of site that users could effectively create and view their own content without turning to a traditional source.
And now we have Twitter. At two years old, it’s still a relative baby compared to the other social networking giants, but it’s growth has been massive (600% over the last 12 months). It combines both the appeal of text messaging and social networking by forcing users to only 140 characters per message, and becomes one of the first with true mobile integration. What results is a glut of content—millions of people all uploading their smallest and largest of moments.
For this brief, I decided to look at the way Twitter works as a public document. People are prepared, and are almost eager, to share their life to the faceless crowds of the internet. I wondered how they would react to having these personal stories shared in print. Printing something has an added impact—a level of perceived permanency that an internet document does not possess. In addition, by placing it on a large format poster, I hoped to replicate the public nature of posting on the internet by confronting viewers with a literal wall of text, while the typeface was chosen to reflect the origins of the content.
Most of the people I asked were initially reluctant to participate, until it was pointed out that their posts were already up for public viewing—by a larger audience.
Overall I'm happy with how it turned out—thanks to all of those who let me plunder their precious Twitter archives!
