On twitter and its lack of locative and embodied qualities

2009-05-12 14:22

Twitter is supposed to be the equivalent of a status indicator. Status indicators are elsewhere visible in mail applications, social networks and instant messaging services which signifies to your contacts your present status. It’s an expression of telepresence, an extension of the “being there” and a way to get to also be “there” for the recipient. However, the problem with transferring this to the Twitter framework is not that it’s portable or length-restricted; it’s that it lacks the use quality of evanescence. It does not disappear when the stati ends which tells people a lot about how other people were feeling, was doing and wanted to communicate an arbitrary time period ago. This is not a case of telepresence, nor is it embodied in that it doesn’t necessarily relocate you to the present or “the there”.

Nils Wiberg

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