Monthly Archives: April 2010

Help Me Articulate the Potential Of Twitter’s Annotations

At last week’s Chirp developers’ conference, Twitter announced plans to release a new feature called Annotations. As I understand it, it will be a way for any Twitter client program to add a metadata payload to each tweet it publishes, with any namespaces it desires. The potential here is poetic, epic, crazy awesome huge. Kim-Mai Cutler’s coverage of it on VentureBeat has been very good, she quotes one unnamed developer as saying it’s “the most disruptive thing Twitter’s done in two years.”

I have been trying to wrap my head around it so I can write about what it means for developers and non-developing end users. This deserves the blogging equivalent of a song, belted out with clear notes and a catchy melody. I’ve got librarians asking me to write about this, on Twitter, and when librarians call – a writer must answer.

I’m reaching out to some of the smartest people I know to get their thoughts about this, and consider yourselves among that group. I would love for you to share any quotable thoughts you have about Annotations in comments here. I will fold your best thoughts into the song I sing while I travel from village to outpost, singing to tell the tale about the epic development Twitter is about to attempt.

OK so really I’ll just blog about it from my bedroom office, but hopefully a lot of people will read it, so please share your thoughts below and make ’em good! Thanks!