The Risk in Using Twitter as a Public Utility - 0 views
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The takeaway here for me is that as fantastic as web services are, many of them are controlled by one party and are thus a single point of failure. If they go down or the particular site makes a change to the web service call, it can potentially ripple through the Internet economy if the API is popular.
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paul reid on 17 Aug 08I've been thinking about this single-point of failure issue for a little while now. The great thing about web2.0 for learning is that the tools fit together. But if a tool breaks the elements built into that narrative immediately lose cohesion. eg. when Edublogs change it's "embed the web" system OR when Twitter changes it SMS provision to be America centric. What happens if teachers/students go to depend on the single entities for connectivist learning - their failure has some serious kickbacks. The recent ability through Ping.fm and Diigo to cross polinate services is a step in the right direction but take this sticky - it could be lost in the sands of API change. In time users with demand cross-pollination and archive features.
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