Unfortunately Twitter is the new IRC. This time though there is no easy way to keep track, log, moderate or control the content which eventually will vanish into the ether.

I’ve hated the fact that Twitter has turned into a chat room, however the fact that it has is one of the reasons why Twitter is the current big thing.

One hopes that the next big thing fills in the feature gaps that Twitter has at the moment.

I agree that there’s not a better place, anywhere on the web, to have short insightful conversations. I can’t tell you how many wonderfun things have happened to me in meat space due to a conversation I’ve had with someone on Twitter. it really does my head in. Can’t really say that I’ve thought about how it’s archived or how to point people to it conversations though. Guess it’s not all that important to me. Once I’ve had a volley of conversations, it’s over. No need to recall it.

But I can see the need for some sort of easy way to track conversations and archive them for the long haul. You’re right… hashtags might work but not if search only goes back 3 weeks. Hmmm, we need a “Phreadz for Twitter” sort solution cos, you know, Phreadz is awesome at doing this.

So solution? An app of course. Twitter search may not archive stuff past 3 weeks, but an app sure could. Searchable conversation app anyone?

Yep, always was. Though it was much easier when it was smaller. But I’ve never seen Twitter as anything more than a fleeting conversation anyway.

Overheard voices in a global Piazza, fleeting glances across a room, thoughts thrown out into the ether.

I like it’s impermanence.

Not everything has to be archived and curated, some things are best left to memory and a verbal history in the re-telling, like you just have.

I’m sure though that something will come along that will make sense of it all and organise it to within an inch of it’s life though.

BTW, really enjoying your blog posts Bronwen.

We are aiming to do just that with TanglerLive (http://www.tanglerlive.com/) as a place where breakaway conversations can happen.

It’s in early stages yet, and better integration with Twitter is on its way.

Would love to hear what you’d like in a tool such as TanglerLive to solve the Twitter conversation problem.

Try Tweetscan?? Not sure how effective it is,.. and it costs..but if the conversation was a particularly important one it might be worth the $2 to retrieve it.

Barry Saunders (@barrysaunders) commented on Twitter earlier that the chat was much like a pub conversation – which also isn’t able to be archived. True and same goes for newsroom chats. But as Twitter is text based, I agree with @bronwen that ‘archive-ability’ or ‘retrieve-ability’ would be a good functionality for Twitter or it’s development army to devise.

In the same vein, it would be good to see an application developed to enable recognition of reply threads – i.e. instant identification of the origin of the tweet to which you’re responding, DMing or RTing… (I’ve tweeted this request before…still waiting…)

And, good to see Bronwen highlighting the value of this conversation in 140ch form instead of being tempted to decry the limitations inherent in such comms. restricted by necessary brevity. This value is underlined by the desire to archive such comms. rather than treat them as pointless &/or ephemeral.

Cheers!

I and many other IRC denizens used to capture our conversations. You could do that with email listservs and most other forms of text chat. Even clients for Fidonet had this ability and we used to capture those echoes, too.

I agree with Bronwen: the lack of archiving on Twitter is a very big failure. I’d go further to say that without it, we should be very wary of entrusting too much of our thought to it.

The best I can do at the moment is run my Twitter RSS feed through Google Reader. That tracks and keeps an ongoing archive of my own tweets.

Then I also have the RSS feed from a Twitter search on “earleyedition OR earlyedition” going into Google Reader. Crude, but that picks up anything referencing me, including the oft-misspelled earlyedition

Picks everything up as long as the tweets to me aren’t from locked accounts.

Kim Flintoff is on the money….the passion in Bronwen’s post points to a burning customer need.
And – kaching – that points to a revenue opportunity.
Bring it on, Rai…….Twitter integration for TanglerLive could be big!

An interview was done via Twitter just recently about the paywall debate. This was done through http://www.twitterview.com
Great thing about that tool is that it tweets the onterview but also stores a transcript for later.

Whilst it wont give you what you are looking for here, right now, it is feasible it could in future – and quite easily too.

It may be worthwhile leaving feedback on that site about what you want ( ie: a virtual press conference/discussion tool), to see if they have plans for that soon.

I have only been using Twitter for a few months so maybe I don’t have a lot to go on in terms of wanting to look back on old conversations on this platform. I use plenty of other communication tools though and my first thoughts on Twitter not saving conversations are:

If I am having a general conversation with friends then it is very unlikely that I will want to keep a record of everything that is said. This is similar to keeping old text messages or emails. Unless they are of a very personal nature then I would not want them. They wouldn’t be online conversations anyway in that case. Due to nothing of any great value being exchanged it does not bother me if these records disappear.

If I am using Twitter for work purposes or I am discussing a personal interest and I come across an interesting source of information then I save this file or link myself straight away. I can then take another look at it whenever I want to.

For me, the problem of not being able to retrieve old twitter conversations arises when the context in which the information saved is not clear or if you can’t actually remember the direction and/or development of the conversation.

In general though, if something pops up in a conversation that is worth saving then do it straight away. Twitter is just making you make that choice a little bit quicker than you would like to.

Rob (@robertpickstone)

While we await Twitter rolling out their enhanced features, there are ways and tools to find older information:-

Google works well for search, and there are a few tools for threading and saving conversations between people.

And to be fair, how many conversations have you had verbally in that time which have not been archived or recorded? (Unless the Government may have been keeping tabs!) There’s been some discussion about the benefits of things actually fading over time – if the conversation was truly good enough you can save the relevant points as Twitter Favourites, or use Delicious or similar.

Incidentally on paywalls, I’m a firm believer that they can only ever work if something is of a significant niche interest – e.g. when I worked at Emap, a title like the Middle Eastern Economic Digest would work, because there were never likely to be many free alternatives.
But for anything which is likely to spawn two or three rivals, which can be run by one or two people on an ad-supported model as a minimum, a paywall makes no sense.

you had it right in the 1st sentence: “Twitter is about realtime conversation.” [with them emphasis on "realtime"]

it is not IRC, it is more like the lunchroom in school.

;^}

jeffs

I didn’t even realize that the archive was temporary until too late. Twitter’s being touted for “coverage” of things like the election in Iran and the TVA ash spill, but for what, if it disappears soon thereafter. And you cannot even make an easy cut and paste of your own tweets.

I’ve gone back to blogging.

I think Scott was referring to the paywall discussion on http://www.tweeterview.com/published-tweeterview/4e6a413d but at present that is only one on one format not an actual streaming discussion.

I am not sure if anyone has seen this concept from Silentale? Still in the very early development stages.

http://bit.ly/4tZ8i3

Thanks

@robertpickstone

If you were tweetin gto that many people at once, wouldn’t your tweet just be full up with @s?

I’d go with just archiving it yourself within the three week time frame. Or use a hashtag and feed that through Google Reader like Dave suggests.

Imagine the space required to archive all tweets – retrieval could be a nightmare too!

a suggestion:

you could reconstruct the debate on the weblog eg. the issue is….
the 2-3 positions were.
the arguments for these positions were.

it can be done in a shorthand kind of way.

then other webloggers –eg .,me– could pick it and kick it along –then we have amore permanent conversation.