MIS LE8 CMU Pull Information from Servers Paper

Differentiate between “push technology” and “pull technology.” Name a company (other than those described in the textbook) that uses “push technology” and describe how the company uses it. Do the same for a company that uses “pull technology.”

PROFESSOR’S GUIDANCE FOR THIS WEEK’S LE:

Twitter vs RSS

Twitter can be stressful in a way that RSS is not. Both are digital, but RSS is more active and Twitter is more passive.

RSS gives you content that you have deliberately subscribed to. Your Twitter stream contains updates from people you have chosen to follow, but also unwanted content. This unwanted content comes in several forms: unwanted content from people you chose to follow, retweets, and worst of all tweets that people you follow have “liked.” You can turn off retweets from people you follow, but you can’t avoid likes. Twitter also has ads, but I find ads less annoying than the other unwanted content.

When an item shows up in your RSS feed you make a choice whether to open it. But Twitter content arrives already opened, including photos. I’ll subscribe to someone’s RSS feed even if I’m interested in only one out of twenty of their posts because it is so easy to simply not read the posts you’re not interested in. But if you’re only interested in one out of twenty things people say on Twitter, then your stream is 95% unwanted content.