Tweetstorms: The less known terminology of the tendency of a Twitter user to link several tweets together if he or she is talking about a certain topic. Although Twitter has not released a tool that allows you to do this effectively, it has led to some of the best things you would see on Twitter. We have seen stories being shared in this format and they are so popular, Twitter’s CEO actually recognizes the peculiar nature of the medium.
When people are busy chaining tweets to form a tweetstorm, there are certain people who look at tweetstorms in a different way where they check how they branch out. The resulting nature is beautiful as shared by one Terence Eden.
THREAD!
This is what Twitter threads *actually* look like. They're not linear conversations, they're branching organic trees. pic.twitter.com/gr4b0cCV4v
— Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) March 2, 2017
“This is what Twitter threads actually look like. They’re not linear conversations, they’re branching organic trees,” he said on the tweet. He then started a thread that shows how Twitter threads can be seen from the data point of view and the resulting renders look like star constellations.
This is the same content as the above tweet but viewed differently
They're even more beautiful when you decouple them from content.
This is the *same* conversation but viewed differently. pic.twitter.com/OBLxOsd0D7
— Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) March 2, 2017
This is what ‘off topic’ looks like and it shows those conversations on Twitter that deviate so much from the original tweet.
Some threads become so long and involved that the original user might not even see how they conclude.
This is what "off topic" looks like! pic.twitter.com/M36toE5erh
— Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) March 2, 2017
This is even a bigger mess
Some arc off into a mess – but that's OK! You should be able to prune off the branches which done matter to you. pic.twitter.com/peL7xFKKyl
— Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) March 2, 2017
This conversation thread is not that convoluted as the ones above
Some threads are small, but perfectly formed.
Is this easier to read than Twitter's vertical list? I don't know – but it is more useful. pic.twitter.com/2u39fSd0xl
— Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) March 2, 2017
He however revealed a limitation of playing around with the data as there are certain APIs you can’t use
But you'll never be able to take advantage of all the beauty you create. Twitter selfishly keeps its "conversation/show.json" API private. pic.twitter.com/8DUh4N3zZn
— Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) March 2, 2017
Well if you are interested in creating such visualizations, there is a Chrome extension you can use or check out his tweet for more links.
