Twit Can Happen
Getting Informed
This week take a look at the recent challenges for Twitter, content drift, link rot, and archivist considerations.
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To understand the impact of Twitter, consider how simple it is to refer to a Tweet now.
- Copy link to a Tweet
- Paste link to Tweet
- Depending on the 3rd-party platform, a Tweet is embedded as a Twitter Card1
Now, imagine what happens if Twitter is set up as a paywall only service. Actually, you don’t have to imagine because the new owners of Twitter have already imagined it.
Casey Newton @CaseyNewtonMore news from Twitter today: Elon Musk and David Sacks have both discussed putting all of Twitter behind a paywall eventually, @platformer has learned
https://www.platformer.news/p/musk-discusses-putting-all-of-twitterWhy does link rot matter? For the same reason domain names are perishable.
As the saying goes… what would possibly go wrong? Content drift.
Inti De Ceukelaire @securintiHijacking a Trump tweet and inserting a dutch song about Russian prostitutes: ✓. Link: https://t.co/vOYhXpR4sO
#thecyber #privacy #oops
41Likes10Retweets](https://twitter.com/securinti/status/823640079067287552)(#footnote-4)
Developing words that linger 🎶
Perhaps the solution is to archive. By archive, I mean archive in the sense as suggested by Shawn M. Jones, Martin Klein, and Herbert Van de Sompel.5
For example, if Twitter is truly operating at startup speed and wants to normalize revenue from advertising with valued added services — make the archive step just as easy and robust.
- Will there be edge cases like editing or deleting problematic Tweets? Yes.
- Will that matter? Perhaps not nearly as much as we might think.
Also, the Tweet for Pay motif might actually survive the A/B testing phase. I tried Twitter Blue briefly to make a video of editing a Tweet for my own testing but that might be just the beginning of a true content management offering.
Back in 2014, I figured that Twitter years with Ev Williams6 would eventually lead to the reconstitution of Blogger with each successive wave of new Twitter enhancements. Now, I only remembered my prognostication because it became less far fetched as I reviewed my Twitter Archives again in 2017.7
So, at the risk of a shot and chaser playback… sometimes, I’m scary accurate.
Shot: I theorize a longer format Twitter eventuality (2014)
Techmeme @TechmemeTwitter is testing Twitter Notes to let users create articles with rich text formatting and uploaded media, which can then be tweeted and shared upon publishing (@sarahintampa / TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/twitter-to-expand-into-long-form-content-with-upcoming-twitter-notes-feature/2Read: Van Halen ISO 9000
3Read: Balkanize, Rinse, Repeat ad infinitum
4Read: A Belgian hacker redirected the links in Trump’s old tweets
5Read: Robustifying Links To Combat Reference Rot
6Read: Ev Williams is the Forrest Gump of Internet
7Read: On Twitter
