I have a pet theory that Twitter is the ultimate annotation platform that’s been right in front of us the whole time. The reason it doesn’t seem like one is bec

I have a pet theory that Twitter is the ultimate annotation platform that’s been right in front of us the whole time. The reason it doesn’t seem like one is because it blurs the line between “annotation” and “conversation”. I think the dynamic is similar: while a normal annotation is a comment on a fragment of text, a Twitter reply is (or at least can be) a comment on a single portion of a longer thread. Two notable differences: - While a typical annotation platform takes a freely-written text and allows any segment to be annotated, Twitter forces the author of a thread to compose their text with the segment boundaries in mind. - While a normal annotation system doesn’t allow you to annotate the annotations, any given “annotation” on Twitter may itself be a thread which allows for annotation. It’s recursive! Maybe the above is a stretch, but personally I think it’s an interesting way to think about Twitter.