Writing a Tweet Storm Chain

Here I offer a practice that will bring all of us Tweeters together as one. Discovery zealots or zombie-denying traditionalists. Content knowledge worshippers or skeptics. Math, English, or history teachers–or those of you who, you know, do that other topic. Immigration restrictionists or citizens, not Americans.

Twitter will be a happier place if its users learn that tweet storm are not as effective as tweet chains.

Others have come before me, but they were writing for early adopters, the ten percenters. I wasn’t an early adopter.

Like other innovators of the obvious, I began with a question: How the hell can I write more than one tweet without forcing everyone to read backwards? And irritants: numbering my multiple thoughts. I could never remember what number I was on–or worse, not bothering to number at all. Yes, I know there’s an app somewhere, but since I didn’t like making everyone reading backwards, I didn’t want that solution anyway.

Lately, I’ve seen the nested retweet, as used here by Megan McArdle and Mickey Kaus, but while this approach does link the tweets, they are still presented in backwards order and also gives readers the feeling they’re spiraling in an endless loop. I recommend against.

At some point I noticed elegant chains of comments, such as these put together by Ed Asante and Spotted Toad and wondered hey, how can I get in on that?

And the answer is: Reply.

Just hit reply on your own tweet. Remove the moniker. Twitter still treats the tweet (try saying that three times fast!) as a reply, and chains it to the original, which also appears as a reference point to show that the new tweet is part of an ongoing series. Better yet, click on any tweet in the series, and they all appear, in order, going back to the first.

Bam. No need to number, no need to use some sort of tweet deck to organize. It’s all kept track for you. Twitter isn’t the easiest interface, and certainly not designed for archival, but if you want to dig up an old series, you can just “Reply” to the last tweet and it chains perfectly. Then, to draw attention to the whole series, use retweet.

Examples: Here’s one of my earliest tweet chains, just to show how late to the game I was.

David Frum, who I linked in an image of above to show how NOT to do it, at very nearly the same time used the more elegant chaining method, so I’m not sure why he’s still stuck in the old ways (perhaps it’s an app).

If people reply to a tweet chain with another tweet chain, you get a nice elegant conversation, like this one between me and Billare, on whether the canonization of the Khans and their appeal to emotion is unseemly. And here’s Dan Meyer not chaining, but showing how to reply to tweets in the chain fashion, so you can easily follow the conversation.

I usually stay out of technology issues. In my former techie life, I was unusual in resolutely avoiding power user tricks. I value flexibility over speed, and since I was always entering new environments with new rules, I wanted to get functional as quickly as possible, not whine about how this new program or operating system wasn’t as cool or powerful as my way better one.

But tweet chains have really enhanced my use of the platform. Furthermore, I’ve now twice written essays after organizing my initial response on Twitter–and given how hard it is for me to start pieces, that’s no small thing.

In any event, I needed to prove again I can keep a piece under 1000 words if I try, and wanted another July piece to keep my count to three. Hopefully, another one comes tomorrow.

So if you see someone laboriously numbering their tweet deck or retweeting a chain, send this along.

Note: It occurred to me that while this is well under 1000 words, the advice itself is about 50. Only I could use 500 words when 50 would do. So here’s an image to pass on: 

Happy Saturday.