A slow and rapid response to tell You that I believe fast computers could handle the load of naming the conversations. But I'm not an expert. Yes indeed, nothing against keyword clouds which could work together with the ids.

Stay in touch!
Edouard

A slow and rapid response to tell You that I believe fast computers could handle the load of naming the conversations. But I'm not an expert. Yes indeed, nothing against keyword clouds which could work together with the ids.

Stay in touch!
Edouard

I agree. I prefer the lack of complexity for not only myself but for “regular”people (i.e. not social media geeks). I also agree that the whole design would be better if the enduser's machines are used for the computation, but do you have any ideas on how that could work out?

The conversation mapping is of great interest to companies and marketing mavens. I'm sure if we build it, they will come in droves to use it. Think of the ego search factor alone! (ego search = googling yourself, etc.)

Thanks for commenting. Please let me know if you come up with anything.

-PC

Thanks for coming!

Firstly let me say that you can use an application called Tweetdeck. That will “split” your Twitter homepage into columns that can be viewed all at once. I find this especially helpful because I tend to use Direct Messages in many of my conversations (we haven't yet talked about how this practice causes impossibilities in conversation mapping — oy vey!)

Secondly let's chat about your proposal. I get it, it makes sense, but I wonder how it would play out when thousands of people are chatting about one subject. I understand processors are pretty advanced nowadays, but the volume of conversation would be gigantic. Also, if processors could even handle it, the naming process would have to happen at Twitter's servers, as simultaneous responses would have to be dealt with by one naming system. In other words, if there are unique IDs for each Tweet, then there must be only one server grid assigning the numbers. Perhaps there is a way around that, but we need to think in terms of data portability and speed.

The never-ending complexity of any numbering system makes the background metadata more complex. The legal industry would be the only one interested in the exacting minutiae of who-said-what-in-what-order. Naming (i.e. numbering) is not necessary for researchers like us to gather the trends in those conversations. This is why I proposed keyword clouds. I later proposed, based on comments, that perhaps each keyword should be clickable (linked) back to its first instance in the allotted time period. That will show us where it generated for the time span we are researching.

Simplicity is key. We want to design these conversation maps so “regular” people can follow them and gather data. We also want to keep scale in mind: some conversations may take place amoung 1,000 voices. I like your naming system for smaller conversations in Twitter but your system mimics forum threads. Forum threads are intuitive but can get quite cumbersome, to say the least. Perhaps we can use your naming system up to a certain critical mass. After that, the data automatically gets dumped into a keyword cloud.

What do you think?

-PC

I've also been invited by @soluzioni and I'm trying to bring a modest contribution.

Following the idea of an ID to the Tweet, I've added another ID for the sender.
So the second lines below are read: “user A started the thread. B, made his 1st reply to A's 1st post…”.
A1: Initial Tweet
B1: Re A1
C1: Re A1
A2: Re B1
C2: Re A2
A3: Re C2
A4: Re B1
D1: Re C2
D1: Informational (to all her/his contacts)
A5: Re D1
E1(2 levels down): Informational
F1(3 levels down): Re E1
and so on..

To be able to follow in real-time with more ease the conversations, it could be interesting to separate Twitter's home page in two (or at least give the choice for it):
- @replies.
- general messages.

So any reader could have the possibility to post an @reply or an informational message related to the initial topic he has been introduced by someone else. Sure there is no beginning or end in keyword clouds, but for the sake of clarity, the time scale would be the reference.

Well, let me know if that helps. I'm not sure yet how I can be useful on the visualisation of the clouds.
Ed

Thanks for jumping in. Good points. Let me think …

Hrmmm, unique ID's. I can't picture how that would work, how would the ID stay consistent among tweets if people are replying 3 levels down? Intriguing concept though. There must be some way, using the ID tag you mention and a search function to design the web to be able to have all related entries end up on one search results page. It would be acceptable if a few stray entries show up in the search results.

Keyword clouds don't point you to a beginning or ending spot, so yes, it would be difficult to jump into a conversation just based on a keyword cloud. Good point. I wonder if we can have metadata behind a keyword cloud, maybe making each word in the cloud a link to the original instance of that keyword? What do you think, Kai?

-PC