The forthcoming closure of social media curation platform Storify in May has led to lots of discussions about the digital preservation and legacy aspects of free social media tools.
Arts and heritage institutions have been enthusiastic users of Tweetdeck, Storify, Wordpress, Vine, Blogger and Flickr. Free to use, they’re the quickest way to bring people onboard. To survive, they need high volumes of users to sell advertising, and to harvest data from.
When Vine closed in 2017, its management pledged to leave an archive of user content online. But there’s been no such promise from Storify’s new owner LiveFyre, itself just gobbled up by Adobe.
Alternatives are popping up. Wakelet appears to fill the gap, and other alternatives include Twitter Moments and Pearltrees.
For museum leaders considering digital lifecycles and value for public money, however, alternative services may have weak legacy potential. And ethically, there might still be issues for public sector or academic institutions using services that trade user or audience data.
Mike Ellis of Thirty8 Digital summed up possible coping strategies for museums: “They should look at self-hosting, or at least double-hosting, if they’re interested in it being anything other than a transient record of events that they’re not too bothered about losing.”
Jon Pratty is a creative digital producer
Arts and heritage institutions have been enthusiastic users of Tweetdeck, Storify, Wordpress, Vine, Blogger and Flickr. Free to use, they’re the quickest way to bring people onboard. To survive, they need high volumes of users to sell advertising, and to harvest data from.
When Vine closed in 2017, its management pledged to leave an archive of user content online. But there’s been no such promise from Storify’s new owner LiveFyre, itself just gobbled up by Adobe.
Alternatives are popping up. Wakelet appears to fill the gap, and other alternatives include Twitter Moments and Pearltrees.
For museum leaders considering digital lifecycles and value for public money, however, alternative services may have weak legacy potential. And ethically, there might still be issues for public sector or academic institutions using services that trade user or audience data.
Mike Ellis of Thirty8 Digital summed up possible coping strategies for museums: “They should look at self-hosting, or at least double-hosting, if they’re interested in it being anything other than a transient record of events that they’re not too bothered about losing.”
Jon Pratty is a creative digital producer
