@display
For those interested in the software that drives the SIDisplay, SI master’s student Morgan Keys has been working to make a generalized and improved version available. You can find it, under the name “@display” at this GitHub repository.
SIDisplay is a Twitter-based public display described in a CSCW paper with Paul Resnick and Emily Rosengren. We built it for the School of Information community, where it replaced a number of previous displays, including a Thank You Board (which we compare it to in the paper), a photo collage (based on the context, content & community collage), and a version of the plasma poster network. Unlike many other Twitter-based displays, SI Display and @display do not follow a hashtag, but instead follow @-replies to the display’s Twitter account. It also includes private tweets, so long as the Twitter user has given the display’s Twitter account permission to follow them.