Besides the content of the thread, which is interesting, you'll notice if you scroll through that the thread is added to periodically, whenever the author finds a piece of information that adds to the theme of the thread. This is an underused but valuable way to use twitter. @grayconolloy maintains several of these threads and builds up arguments that can contain years worth of contributing information.
While any thread could be curated to make it look more prescient or more predictive or more correct generally, these threads do demonstrate the overall effect of being able to compile a realtime and longterm "story".
Twitter's most innovative or emergent uses never managed to be useful for most users, and the canned attempts to deliver what people invent have been unsuccessful for the most part. The main reason why to my mind is that it takes literally maintaining a list somewhere of "long-term threads", and remembering which posts to post in which thread. No one does this, but for many in the news-media this would be a valuable way of piling up information into a coherent narrative that people could always "unroll" or whatever.
Please comment with the obvious twitter features that I'm not mentioning. I really don't use it very much anymore and nothing recently has jumped out at me either as a feature or as a feature that people use and promote that replicates this functionality.
yeah, I love those threads, but Twitter makes it difficult to handle. On the computer, I can have all of them on my bookmarks bar. But no way to handle that on mobile.
Unless you start a thread for your threads, and pin that to your profile (like, the thread is the first tweet in every thread)
Edit: twitter had the 'moments' feature, but that went away some time ago
im not sure how many threads can be pinned, but there isn't an obvious way to highlight these info dense, semi-coherent threads that can just about be read like a long form piece on the subject.
in some ways the idea is almost like zettelkasten for a twitter user. hashtags were derived from zettelkasten note systems, but twitter never encouraged metadata usage to categorize and sustain narratives, or innovative ways to search intelligently across these ideas. the hashtag's functionality was reduced to a viral agent/barometer and soulless corporate actors believed removing spaces from a slogan was the same thing as meaning something.
im pleased with the large proliferation of note-taking and org cms systems today. i think none of them is the answer but the answer wouldn't come about without them or without the experimentation taking place in the space. Being able to easily and accurately collect information across media and various websites and ship/store/recall it all is going to be an incredible shift, but requires replacing almost all the tools we know or only using them as peripherals.
3 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 18.8 ms ] threadWhile any thread could be curated to make it look more prescient or more predictive or more correct generally, these threads do demonstrate the overall effect of being able to compile a realtime and longterm "story".
Twitter's most innovative or emergent uses never managed to be useful for most users, and the canned attempts to deliver what people invent have been unsuccessful for the most part. The main reason why to my mind is that it takes literally maintaining a list somewhere of "long-term threads", and remembering which posts to post in which thread. No one does this, but for many in the news-media this would be a valuable way of piling up information into a coherent narrative that people could always "unroll" or whatever.
Please comment with the obvious twitter features that I'm not mentioning. I really don't use it very much anymore and nothing recently has jumped out at me either as a feature or as a feature that people use and promote that replicates this functionality.
Unless you start a thread for your threads, and pin that to your profile (like, the thread is the first tweet in every thread)
Edit: twitter had the 'moments' feature, but that went away some time ago
in some ways the idea is almost like zettelkasten for a twitter user. hashtags were derived from zettelkasten note systems, but twitter never encouraged metadata usage to categorize and sustain narratives, or innovative ways to search intelligently across these ideas. the hashtag's functionality was reduced to a viral agent/barometer and soulless corporate actors believed removing spaces from a slogan was the same thing as meaning something.
im pleased with the large proliferation of note-taking and org cms systems today. i think none of them is the answer but the answer wouldn't come about without them or without the experimentation taking place in the space. Being able to easily and accurately collect information across media and various websites and ship/store/recall it all is going to be an incredible shift, but requires replacing almost all the tools we know or only using them as peripherals.