tweetstorm

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tweetstorm is a series of tweets, each replying to the previous, often each numbered so the sequence is clear, as a method of expressing a longer series of related thoughts as a single thread on Twitter.

On/about 2019-04-24 Twitter changed their UI (on web) to allow users to edit multiple threaded tweets at the same time and click one button to publish them all simultaneously.

Why

IndieWeb Examples

Kevin Marks

Kevin Marks often tweetstorms live notes (using Noter Live, without numbering tweets) from conferences and talks, and then later assembles them into a blog post on his site kevinmarks.com.

Other Examples

Damon Jones

Damon Jones Twitter Thread Tutorial Damon Jones wrote a 13 tweet series explaining how to do a Twitter thread as of 2017-08-04.

Chris Aldrich

Chris Aldrich only very occasionally tweetstorms (using Noter Live, without numbering tweets). Most often it is from conferences, talks, or meetings and then he later assembles them into a post on his own site.

For more "traditional" tweetstorms, I:

  • compose them on my site for style and length
  • cut and paste them into Noter Live in rapid succession
  • I use Noter Live without the username filled in, so the tweets appear to come from me on Twitter without including my @handle; Noter Live also auto-threads the tweetstorm in the Twitter stream, so clicking on any one Tweet provides the entire thread/"story".
  • I cut and paste the richer Noter Live data into my original post and publish or update the post
  • I tweet one final note to Twitter with a link back to the compilation on my site and include that in my post
  • Finally, I manually backfill all of the syndicated links onto the original post for future backfeed.

The process is an odd melange of both POSSE and PESOS, but it's typically geared towards reaching a broader Twitter audience over the traditional audience of my personal site. The benefit is that those who are subscribed to my personal site get a better experience.

Marc Andreessen

Marc Andreessen often posts tweetstorms (on https://twitter.com/pmarca) that seem sufficiently structured that more than one site has sprung up which reposts them as complete blog posts:

He sometimes reposts his own tweetstorms on his own blog:

E.g.

Service Examples

There are many services which recognize tweetstorms and “unroll” them into single page permalink posts, (semi-)automatically, usually triggered by an @-mention of the service and a keyword like “unroll” or “compile”.

Readwise

Readwise is a service with a Twitter account (@readwiseio) that will convert a tweetstorm into presumably a single page (presumably private) permalink by replying to any tweetstorm’s post with the key phrase "save thread"

E.g.:

tweetstorm io

tweetstorm.io is a site that detects tweetstorms on Twitter user profiles, displays their recent tweet storms, and provides permalinks for each tweetstorm they detect. E.g. recent tweetstorm(s) of a profile:

Thread Reader

ThreadReaderApp (aka Thread Reader) is a service with a Twitter account (@threadreaderapp) that will convert a tweetstorm into a single page post by replying to any tweetstorm’s post with the key word "unroll" E.g.:

On 2020-05-28 the service began unveiling a beta feature that allows users to syndicate (PESOS) Twitter threads to their personal websites using Micropub.

Unroll Thread

Unroll Thread is a service that has a Twitter account (@UnrollThread) that will create a serialization of a tweetstorm also by replying to a tweetstorm’s last post with

@UnrollThread unroll

E.g.:

Threader

Threader App also has a Twitter account (@threader_app) and creates one-page compilations of tweet storms by replying with

@threader_app compile

E.g.:

Application Examples

Stormcrow

Stormcrow is a native iOS app for writing tweetstorms. It was created and released on 2017-03-27 by Jared Sinclair.

Typefully

Typefully is a Twitter editor/client primarily intended for composing and posting tweetstorms to Twitter. Also includes the ability to create multiple drafts, schedule tweetstorms for later, and importing content.

Chirr App

Chirr App is a Twitter editor app for creating tweetstorms and helping to split text, providing analytics, add tweets to threading, and reply to posts. There is a free tier with additional features for $4/month (in January 2022).


Threadjacking

Threadjacking is a microagression where a reader may interject a series of replies into an existing thread with a different topic. Derived originally from email lists and Bulletin board the practice is evident in Twitter threads.

Other practices of thread jacking can include examples of mansplaining by defining terms the author may already know, trying to elevate their own work by linking to the author's threads, or snitch tagging a person the author is discussing.


Brainstorming

How do you cite repost or quote

How do you cite, repost, or quote a tweetstorm?

Amy Guy suggests a single repost, with individual blockquote elements for each tweet of the tweetstorm with different dated permalink for each.

gRegor Morrill has quoted tweetstorms with blockquote + h-cite:

How do you POSSE to tweetstorm

article to tweetstorm

If you write your own blog post (article), but want to POSSE it as a tweetstorm, how do you do it?

I think Ben Werdmüller was wondering about this.

See Indieweb example above by Chris Aldrich.

One idea would be to publish a note and then if you publish a reply to that note in your publshing UI you could hit a "storm" or "stream" button. This edite the original note putting in a rel=next. The second post would would get a rel=prev. This pattern would continue until someone hit end "storm" button.

The first note would display all the replies in the storm. The second note would display n-1 (everything but the first).

tweetstorm UI

Or perhaps tweetstorms "work" because of the Twitter UI's constraints.

Perhaps an indieweb tweetstorm UI should similarly build on a note with a chain of reply posts.

Related:

Tweetstorm Syntax

There appears to be two kinds of tweetstorm syntax:

Articles with commentary on Tweetstorms

Long Tweetstorms

  • ...

Criticism

There is a wide variety both for and against tweetstorms:

  • It is a common criticism that instead of tweetstorming, writers should post their content as an article, often on their own website. Of course one could certainly do both.
  • Why, see thread, naturally: https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1004716924478132224
    • "hello people can you PLEASE fucking stop doing endless variations on "this should have been a post instead of a Twitter thread" when someone chooses Twitter as a platform for a longer thread it is annoying AND ableist AND it's not news to anyone that blog posts exist" @rahaeli June 7, 2018
  • ...

See Also

  • Thread Reader - unrolls a full Twitter thread on a single page for easier reading
  • https://twitter.com/crtr0/status/1236001257778630656
    • "This is nice, but I don't see any way to embed this on a website/blog.

      I'm starting to think of Tweet storms/threads as a new form of "blogging", so I'm really interested in tools that pull that content into my own website/blog." @crtr0 March 6, 2020
  • https://twitter.com/CodyMillerELA/status/1263499324262096902
    • "Twitter threads really are a genre we should be teaching. They have a thesis statement, they evaluate & cite evidence, they expand on the evidence with original analysis, they make connections across texts, & they have strong conclusions & use hashtags to connect to other convos." @CodyMillerELA May 21, 2020
  • Threadreader criticism: “content harvesting” (maybe meaning the copying of other people’s content and wrapping it with ads?) https://twitter.com/lilithsaintcrow/status/1347593453291462658
    • "Threadreader is blocked because it's content-harvesting, and replies are locked because I grew up around these people and I've been a woman on the internet for long enough to know to protect myself." @lilithsaintcrow January 8, 2021
  • why instead of blog posts: for accessibility of authoring: https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1440695857699962893
    • "I have ADHD: it makes writing blogs hard but Twitter easy. So it gets quickly tiring that every time I'm posted there that the comments immediately go "why isn't this a blog? Twitter is a bad site for this kind of writing and I hate it blarg"" @Foone September 22, 2021
  • Criticism: Twitter throttles people’s posting rate, thus potentially interrupting a tweetstorm for at least hours, causing aggravation, loss of train of thought, etc. that wouldn’t have happened with writing a blog post: https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1471985507131219970
    • "Twitter cut me off, grrrrr – will post rest of thread later.

      On @DonLemon @CNN tonite 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern if you want more (completely understand if not!)..." @Bob_Wachter December 17, 2021
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