Facebook Demetricator and the Easing of Prescribed Sociality by Ben Grosser at Unlike Us #3

At Unlike Us #3 Ben Grosser presented the Facebook Demetricator which is a web browser extension that hides all the metrics on Facebook and therewith demetricates Facebook’s interface. Grosser describes his project as a piece of critical software that intervenes in the numerical focus of Facebook. The quantification of social relations: More! Ben Grosser narrates a… Read more Facebook Demetricator and the Easing of Prescribed Sociality by Ben Grosser at Unlike Us #3

The Like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web

My co-authored article, with colleague Carolin Gerlitz, has been published in New Media & Society in Online First on February 4, 2013. Abstract The paper examines Facebook’s ambition to extend into the entire web by focusing on social buttons and developing a medium-specific platform critique. It contextualises the rise of buttons and counters as metrics… Read more The Like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web

Video: Reworking the fabric of the web: The Like economy

[vimeo width=”700″ height=”394″]http://vimeo.com/39256468[/vimeo] Conference presentation at Unlike Us #2: Understanding Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives. Session 4: Software Matters Anne Helmond (NL) and Carolin Gerlitz (UK) – Reworking the fabric of the web: The Like economy. Conference Day 2: March 10 2012 Amsterdam, 11.00 – 12.30 Abstract In recent years, Facebook has increasingly expanded beyond the… Read more Video: Reworking the fabric of the web: The Like economy

Visualization: Amazon recommendation network for “Software Studies: A Lexicon”

I recently came across a post on O’Reilly that highlighted Christopher Warnow’s network visualization for the book A Thousand Milieus. Warnow created a tool using Processing, based on the Gephi API, that retrieves the Amazon recommendation network for a book. You can download the tool, input your own book and visualize the recommendation network. The tool allows… Read more Visualization: Amazon recommendation network for “Software Studies: A Lexicon”

Digital Methods Winterschool 2012: APIs – Variations and Change

After the introduction to APIs and API critiques Bernard Rieder talked about APIs from the perspective of  “Variation and Change.” This transcript is compiled from collaborative notes by the Digital Methods Initiative. API: a means and protocol for two systems to exchange data and functionality. APIs can be seen as data sources and as objects of… Read more Digital Methods Winterschool 2012: APIs – Variations and Change

Digital Methods Winterschool 2012: APIs as Interfaces to the Cloud

From 25-27 January 2012 we held our fourth annual Winter School with the theme “Interfaces for the Cloud: Curating the Data.” The first day consisted of paper presentations and responses/feedback. The second day we collaboratively kicked off a workshop on API critique where I started with an introduction to APIs and API critiques, followed by… Read more Digital Methods Winterschool 2012: APIs as Interfaces to the Cloud