killer tweetage
Ev’s post outlining the rationale for the implementation of RTs in Twitter is full of interesting bits*, but this is the sentence that stuck out in the post. Emphasis his:
This last point [re. unstructured data] is not obvious but is particularly important for fulfilling Twitter’s goal of helping you discover the information that matters most to you as quickly as possible.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen Twitter’s goal stated that succinctly. I Googled the phrase and scanned the Twitter website and couldn’t find an occurrence of it before…did I miss it somewhere obvious? I like it – it’s deep, wide and actionable. And without being heavy-handed about it, it necessarily makes the acts of contributing to Twitter (tweeting, RTing, favoriting, following, listing) crucial inputs into the act of discovering on Twitter. (Think: social filtering, preference mining, influence analysis, etc.)
Ev goes on to define the perfect Twitter; emphasis mine this time:
The perfect Twitter would show you only the stuff you care about – relevant, timely, local, funny, whatever you’re most interested in – even if you don’t follow the person who wrote it. And, of course, it would give you ultimate, fine-grained control in how to do so. We want to give you more ways to help the good stuff bubble to the top.
Which is the perfect bookend to David Hornik’s post this morning about Twitter and advertising.
* I have lots of opinions about commentless RTs, but am holding back until I’ve had a chance to experience them firsthand.