automating the discovery & sharing of online …. gary... · services similar to ifttt zapier
TRANSCRIPT
Gary Green
Surrey County Council Library Service
Automating the discovery & sharing of online information resources across multiple social
networks
Many Places = Many Conversations
Many websites focus on networked communication
Many people are on networks -discovering, communicating, sharing
Locating/sharing information in right way, with right audience, at right time across a number of sites/accounts can be difficult
Automate to Overcome Problems
Automating discovery & sharing of resources
Online services inc. www.ifttt.com
Benefits & drawbacks of automation
Why your input is important
The information literacy connection
What is IFTTT?
A free web service
IFTTT = If This Then That
Connect over 60 online & messaging services (channels) together
Automatically feed information/data between channels
Why is it Useful?
Pull information together easily
Share information easily
Manage information flows
Wider online presence
Organise it all via a single site
Effective use of time & resources
Which Services Connect?
Social networks
Bookmarking sites
Image, video, audio sharing sites
Blogging services
Document storage & collaboration
Email & messaging services
Date, time, weather, stock alerts, health/lifestyle
How Does it Work?
Connect 2 channels together
1st channel is the Trigger
2nd channel is the Response
Each Trigger/Response combo is a recipe
If Trigger does This action Then Response does That action
Recipes are regularly checked & run
The Recipe
Trigger - new RSS item
Response - send tweet
{{ }} contains data from RSS feed. You add the rest
The generated tweet
Recipes
Recipes
Services Similar to IFTTT
Zapier https://zapier.com/
WeWiredWeb http://www.wewiredweb.com/
Elastic.io http://www.elastic.io/
Cloudwork https://cloudwork.com/
Wappwolf http://wappwolf.com
Issues and Drawbacks
Information overload
It’s easy to bombard people with too much information
Uninformative or misleading headlines/article titles in item feeds
Information doesn’t get pulled through in the way you expect
Human Input
Check regularly - ensure it works as expected
Control how information passes between channels
Stop irrelevant information being shared
Share manually if more appropriate
Use an information literacy perspective…
Search, Identify, Gather
Useful sources of information:
Any with an ifttt channel
Any with an RSS feed
Better to pull in more information & sift later?
Don’t automatically assume every item will be relevant…
Assess and Evaluate
Use intermediary stage between discovery/sharing eg Pocket:
Some functionality of RSS reader
Pocket tags can be used to act as triggers
Helps sift out items you don’t want to share
Communicate and Share
Define:
Where you want information to be sent
When you want it to be shared
How you adapt/tailor information to the channel
Organise and Archive
Standardise discovery & sharing methods
Keep record/archives/logs of items shared
Backup information automatically
Automating Discovery and Sharing
Spend less time juggling different web presences
Standardise your information sharing practice
Get the machine to take some of the strain
Keep control
Gary Green
Surrey County Council Library Service
Automating the discovery & sharing of online information resources across multiple social
networks.
Image Credits
Social media beakers – iconshock.com
Social media heroes – iconshock.com
Social media trucks – cutelittlefactory.com
Social media hearts – customicondesign.com
All other screenshots www.ifttt.com