Social Informatics and Media Studies

1) Although Halloween may be over for many, allaboutfood is doing a poll about your Halloween treats.

2) Ads that played on living room TVs accounted for more than one-third of all YouTube ad revenue, Google parent Alphabet reported earlier this week, highlighting how meaningful TV watching has become to both the company and the broader entertainment ecosystem. By contrast Netflix has been shedding a lot of employees and it's stock has dropped almost 50% over a year, as people are largely staying subscribed but watching less.

3) In reading a "10 years later" follow-up on a poll about fanfiction tropes, I commented over at a post cathexys made that seeing this callback right now makes me think that the way AO3 has brought story types to the fore has had a lot to do with where we are now. AO3's temporary inaccessibility has led to fanfic being treated like disposable content packaged together for dumping into online spaces. ( Read more... )

4) Is anyone planning some special Halloween viewing? And what about tunes?

I have tried to start a post six times today and keep getting stalled by something else.

1) What a week: Walter Koenig, Patrick Stewart, AO3 being down for weeks, still so much going on re: Pillowfort migrations. Tiring and sad.

2) Frustrating morning. Was doing the grocery run to two stores to get items for a Halloween dinner. Realized after unpacking everything that we were low on Worcestershire sauce and I'd forgotten to put it on my list. Decided to walk back to get my steps in and take our old phone for trade-in at Best Buy. ( Read more... )

3) Someone told me this week that with a paid account I can post polls wherever I post. I haven't tried it out yet but I will. What I was thinking is that I could do this for the communities I run so that others can enable Kudos polls at those locations as well.

4) My last Pillowfort Blanket Box: Pillowfort Eulogy Blanketbox by iimpavid (Originally posted October 20, 2026) ( Read more... )

As a reminder, all of these can be found at pillowfortu_haul

It's a funny coincidence that today's question for tv_talk's TV Tuesday discussion happens to deal with perfect places.

1) Perfect Place Blanket Box by veridium (originally posted August 19, 2018)

This Blanket Box is all about your perfect place, whether real, fictional, or a hope for the future; somewhere you can go to relax or energize yourself. ( Read more... )

2) Rocking Chair Blanket Box (Originally posted October 31, 2018) ( Read more... )

3) Frostiron Blanket Box by ehtarwrites (Originally posted May 30, 2019) ( Read more... )

1) So one community that I posted to and viewed regularly over at Pillowfort, which didn't have an active mod, was Food. I liked how it covered everything, not just the making of it. And I took a look around and realized there was no such community here.

Unfortunately someone created an empty community with that name when Dreamwidth opened, so it was taken. So I have made another called allaboutfood. I'm still setting it up but as the description reads "Share it here, whether it was a meal, an experiment, a recipe, dinner out, or a treat. Also a place to ask others for recommendations or help with food planning."

2) If anyone would be willing to make a banner for allaboutfood I have photos that can be used. In the meantime I've thrown together something basic.

3) I keep thinking about all the steps that led to the closing of Pillowfort. ( Read more... )

1) In a follow-up to my post the other day about creating the Kudos footer, florianschild has created a browser extension to add it automatically to your posts.

2) In response to some questions about following a tag sitewide (something one could do on Pillowfort), I thought I'd take a look at the Latest Things page since I was betting that Friday five would show up today.

And indeed it has. What I was hoping is that one can substitute other tags and make them come up in chronological order. For example, I used https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest?tag=pillowfort to find posts about Pillowfort. But this only worked because Pillowfort is already a major tag in today's posts. I tried substituting "Merlin" instead and nothing came up.

So the good news is, it's technically possible but the bad news is that there seems to be no option to use it outside of the Latest feed.

3) Speaking of the Friday Five, I'd like to introduce it to the Blanket Box. I think FF is probably Dreamwidth's version of the Q&A meme and, as its name suggests, comes out weekly. So for any Pillowforters looking for things to post about, these are always available.

4) I have not been to a Michael's in quite some time, and thought I haven't missed much. It seems to be pivoting from a store for crafters to a home décor one that still carries some crafting items. ( Read more... )

5) Now that the surprise about PF's news is passing, I wanted to circle around to something which stood out to me in the closing announcement:

"In retrospect, I think the site never really recovered from the security incident in 2021. We had great momentum going up to that point, but after we had to take the site down for several weeks, the buzz and word of mouth never came back no matter how much we tried." ( Read more... )

Adapted from the How I Use Pillowfort Blanket Box I created.

What's a blanket box?

A blanket box is a set of prompts to help you to build your Dreamwidth! They all have a theme and this one's theme is you and Dreamwidth! To take part, copy the questions and create your own post, with a link back to the questions post. Other blanket boxes are at pillowfortu_haul.

The Rules

The first rule is that there are no rules.
You can answer as long or as short as you want, delete prompts, add your own, or not answer certain prompts at all.

The Blankets

When do you visit Dreamwidth during a day? (Do you visit every day?)

I do visit every day, and even made an effort to do so during my recent trip. While at home I usually get on around noon time and during the trip it was in early evening.

What's the first thing you do? ( Read more... )

1) I am SO sad to hear that Pillowfort will be shutting down in December. It's the only site I've used extensively besides Dreamwidth (and LJ before it, though I have been gone from LJ longer than I was doing much other than crossposting). However I am not surprised. ( Read more... )

2) Speaking of site survivals and internet time -- Slate survives: "Slate’s homepage has long functioned as a “fossil of what the internet was during that time,” said Ivylise Simones, Slate’s creative director. In 1996, Slate was trying to figure out what a magazine on the internet should even look like; in 2026, it’s among the last general-interest digital-native news sites, and print magazines are dying out. “Salon is one of our only lasting contemporaries,” Frey noted."

I remember when both of these were founded, and it's good to know that despite the tough environment for text-media (print is less than half of what it was, both for newspapers and magazines) that there are success stories as well.

3) Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All. Seems one can never underestimate greed, or the assumption that big money will never be held responsible.