#winterwondergram: Patterns and Diversions

An Instagram Perspective Story

I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with hashtags and social media lately, particularly because:

1. Finding stories with data intrigues me

2. I like the serendipity aspect

3. I want to further explore McLuhan’s “medium is the message/massage” concept

One blog post I’d recommend is this one by Clive Thompson:

“The Tag Is the Soul of the Internet”

He addresses the McLuhan/Innis notion of bias in communication:

“That how a medium functions is far more interesting and powerful than the content that travels over it.”

So I decided to take some screen shots with my iPad. First I tried “melancholy”, then “Eiffel Tower”, but I wasn’t impressed. There seemed to be few photos and much “artistic typography” (you know, all those filtered clever quotes and quips Tumblr is full of).

Given the recent storm in the Northeast, I settled on

#winterwonderland

I took screen shots and sent them to iPhoto on my laptop to create a slideshow, primarily because I wanted music.

I ended up having to upload that onto YouTube, which is a tad anticlimactic being so short.

Then I tried Vuvox (Express) – an old standby favorite. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attach music, as one can in Vuvox Collage, and it was impossible to embed in WordPress (what IS that?). So here’s the link (it’s Flash, so use Chrome or Firefox):

(click on the images to enlarge)

http://www.vuvox.com/presentations/065d5c53f6

Just as I was posting this I found Mashable’s collection of Vine App videos depicting the story of the NE blizzard

For several years now I’ve used Tag Galaxy , which is completely mesmerizing. It narrows tags down if you like, and expanding each image will take you to its Flickr home page.