Twitter Comments

I gave Twitter a chance about a year and a half–ago. Still goin’. Still tweetin’.

But I realized that this short–form status project had tons of potential. Potential for what, though, I wasn’t sure. 140 characters means ruthless edits — but could you hold a conversation?

As the service grew rapidly, they added a feature that would let you reply to another user by adding @ before their username. So by posting “@2oft [reply text goes here],” it will link to the last status update from my account. Needless to say, some people abuse this privilege.

While people continued to use the service, developers created lots of interesting. new uses of the data because of the extensive API. Applications, hooking it to other social networks, tying in pictures and other social media were all ways people added to the basic, 140–character blog.

It’s a huge, huge system now. Twitter has a rich, diverse user base that continues to grow. And developers continue to expand the ways you can interact with it. However, beyond anything any developer has done, the most important part of the system is the users. And, oddly enough, it’s something that I’m going to try and exploit.

Twitter comments

It’s simple: when I post one of these here blogs, I post a link to on Twitter. Then, if anybody finds it interesting, they use one of them @–things. Then we have one of those back–and–forth conversations I say I don’t want to have.

The benefit of this being, newcomers to the site won’t stray off–message as they read our chat about the weather. Not that I need any help getting off–message, I do pretty well in just a paragraph or two. With a writing style that lends itself to 1,000–word diatribes, three pages of threaded and nested comments just won’t do.

Answering 140–character blasts of emotion will. The response will likely be more appropriate, and most assuredly better edited. Plus, it fulfills my libertarian bent!

Political predilections aside, I truly love freedom. In that, I love being given as much free reign as I can muster, but no more. One of the things that bug me about comment sections is that they are so slanted towards the one who owns the post. How about moving the conversation elsewhere?

That’s really the point of trackbacks. To let other people know that you are continuing or adding to the idea that somebody else started. Then the Blog Carnivals came, then the people hawking all–natural supplements, and trackbacks lost their way. Comments came and went, and so did the carnival of open trackback post festivals.

Titling this post more accurately would be “Twitter replies”, I think. Yet, I needed to show how I was setting the conversation free. How I was changing from a comment–based system to some sort of experimental reply system. How I was getting sick of comments for low, low mortgage rates and discount pharmaceuticals.

Sadly, there’s no comment section to delve into the virtues of Godwin and his prediction that all conversations allowed to continue for any amount of time, will eventually lead to somebody being called a Nazi. And I’m sure you’re torn up about that.

The biggest social network

It wouldn’t be fulfilling my obsessive–compulsive need for completeness to end without pointing out that while Twitter is a great tool for public conversations, it has nothing on the biggest social network. It’s the one everybody uses already.

You know that lady that forwards you every funny picture, story about Jesus, or so–unreal–it–had–to–be–true Snopesbait that hits her inbox? That’s the one I’m talking about. The world’s largest social network, in either IMAP or POP3.

There’s no better, more reliable, more widely–used information gathering source on the planet. And you’ve probably got the spam — with its own promises of low, low mortgage rates and discount pharmaceuticals — to prove it.

Too old for this

I am too old for this, but I keep doing it. Don’t ask me why.

status: published
lastmod: '2009-01-10T00:05:24.000Z'
excerpt: 'Titling this post more accurately would be “Twitter replies”, I think. Yet, I needed to show how I was setting the conversation free. How I was changing from a comment–based system to some sort of experimental reply system. How I was getting sick of comments for low, low mortgage rates and discount pharmaceuticals.'
author: meadowhill login
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