@replies and RSS feeds

While looking at tweets for some months now I have a theory that tweets encapsulate some meta data in them. Inside the tweet there is already data about the time when it has been posted, information about the application with which it has been posted and from whom and maybe in reply to whom. Tweets usually show up in RSS feeds and thus can be displayed on other sites, like I have done with mine at this blog and on Livejournal.com. On the first site all @replies are visible although I do not like that, on the latter these are not visible. Also on Facebook only my regular tweets are showing, though retweets do show up there and I delete them manually from my feed.

There are a few and maybe many accounts on Twitter that use RSS feeds only and thus retweet tweets of other users. For example accounts like @haikutwaiku or @needsex are just collections of RSS feeds of other people and thus violating their copyright. If there is such a thing like copyright on Twitter. If I would search for a certain keyword the retweets of these accounts do not show up and therefore I get the idea there must be some extra information encapsulated in these tweets. When I have my ideas more clearly I will contact the people behind Twitter about this.

Other accounts I find interesting are collections of P2000 announcements from fire fighters that are taking place in Amsterdam or other major Dutch cities. These are shown on for example @p2khaaglanden, @p2kgooi, @p2kamsterdam, @p2kflevoland, @p2krotterdam and @p2kutrecht. These accounts do not use RSS feeds though, but a combination of PWD and ActivePerl.

Through with Remediation

When you’re looking at a car and seeing it just as a new version of a horse and carriage you are leaving out so many extra features. A car is more comfortable, more safe, it’s generally much faster and got more horse power. In a car there could be a radio and a TomTom. Using the term remediation (new media refers to old media) to compare the car with previous vehicles is not right or at least not complete. The same goes for a computer and a typewriter. A computer can be used for processing documents but also for adding pictures to these documents, or for multimedia purposes and e-mail, for Internet and music and much more. Also here remediation is not the right way to look at a computer.

The same goes for Twitter, which can not just be compared to a simple text message like an sms or written notes left around. This service can be transferred to blogs and RSS feeds and the hashtag makes it possible to specify these RSS feeds and thus create groups. People within corporations discover the service to communicate and other people use it for small updates for their website like newspapers or blogs. If there’s no previous medium for Twitter, how can I use the term remediation for this? Should I be through with remediation and look for another theory instead?

I Will Follow

There’s no easy or clear answer to the question ‘what is Twitter?’ as the service appears to be very simple. Users can create a profile within two minutes and start shouting something (tweet) with a maximum of 140 characters (with spaces), like in an sms. You can ‘follow’ friends or other users and they could follow you. But the features this website offers and the uses of the RSS feeds have many possibilities and implications. I don’t mean just in the way people interact socially but in this new way of communicating and keeping in touch with each other and the world.