...then it must act like Apple, Inc. That is, it must exercise control over its ecosystem. Just as Apple is in charge of the iPhone's hardware, operating system, and App Store, so must Twitter control the vocabulary for annotating Tweets. Without control there is discord, and discord prevents software interoperability. Discord is the reason why web application mashups are complex and brittle. Discord is also the reason why the Semantic Web remains more of a theoretical construct than a functioning system. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel is relevant here since it describes how a people's unity of purpose is lost when they can no longer communicate.¹ The Lord may work in mysterious ways, but Twitter should not. It is irrational for Twitter to intentionally leave its ecosystem developers without a controlled vocabulary.

One might be sympathetic to Twitter's proposal to "let a hundred flowers blossom"² and hundreds of vocabularies develop if such an approach worked. However, open efforts at formulating metadata schemes, starting with RDF ontologies (1999),³ extending to Microformats (2004),⁴ and culminating in start-ups like Freebase (2005),⁵ have yet to pay off. After a decade of experimentation there is a plethora of metadata schemes, but a paucity of software applications making use of these schemes. In many ways, this outcome may have been unavoidable.⁶

So, pushing the hard work of vocabulary development onto developers and thinking that, somehow, magically, they will coalesce around common terms is a demonstrably false belief. Still, there are existing RDF ontologies and Microformats capable of partially describing many of the things one might want to Tweet about during the course of a day. It seems wasteful to ignore this past work or leave its potential adoption to the whims of competing ecosystem developers. At this point in time, Twitter needs to step in and add some value. It needs to take control. It needs to extract ideas from existing metadata schemes, assimilate these ideas into a simple controlled vocabulary, publish this vocabulary, and enforce its exclusive use when Annotations are transmitted over the Twitter platform.

1. Genesis 11:1-9.
2. A slogan used by Chairman Mao Zedong to encourage Chinese intellectuals outside of the Communist Party to contribute ideas on how the government could promote progress in the arts and sciences. Many of these intellectuals were later executed.
3. Tauberer, J. (2006-07-26). What Is RDF. O'Reilly XML.com.
4. Microformat FAQs relating to RDF. (2009-08-22). Microformats Wiki.
5. Freebase CrunchBase Profile. (2009-03-30). CrunchBase.
6. Doctorow, C. (2001-08-26). Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. Personal blog.

Twitter is in the process of formalizing an emergent convention known as the retweet. For those unfamiliar with this convention, one could view it as a way of quoting a message (i.e. tweet) to all of one's followers. So, if one wants to retweet a tweet (e.g. "I just saw a meteor!"), one can do so by copying it and then referencing the original author (e.g. "matthewmarkus") via the retweet syntax, like so:

RT @matthewmarkus I just saw a meteor!

Now, the "RT @matthewmarkus" portion of the aforementioned retweet is what is known as metadata. That is, it is data about data or, more specifically, data about the original tweet. Twitter's goal in formalizing the retweet is to separate this metadata from the original data so that computers can readily process it, thereby making retweets more searchable and trackable. Unfortunately, there is a group of individuals, let's call them the Twitter Conservatives, that are trying to halt Twitter's formalization of the retweet.

The Twitter Conservatives, led by viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella) and supported by individuals such as my friend Michael Weiksner (@weiks), want to conserve the original retweet syntax and keep metadata intermingled with data. In order to publicize their efforts, they are gathering under the #SaveReTweets hashtag on Twitter. As near as I can tell, the Twitter Conservatives' objections to Twitter's formalization of the retweet are as follows:

1. The formalized retweet system does not allow one to add a comment to a retweet. That is, under the new rubric, one cannot formulate a message equivalent to:

   Me too! RT @matthewmarkus I just saw a meteor!

2. The formalized retweet system obscures the identity of a retweeter and, thereby, hinders his/her ability to lend credibility to the tweets that he/she retweets.
3. The formalized retweet system eliminates a commonly understood format for retweeting that is utilized across Twitter clients.
4. Formalizing retweets by separating metadata from data violates the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Principle.

These objections, though, are easily rebutted:

1. Twitter's formalization of a retweet as a pointer to, or, alternatively, as a verbatim copy of, an original tweet is a step forward since it prevents spammers and crackers from producing retweets containing spammy or malicious links. Furthermore, Twitter's formalization highlights the difference between quoting something and commenting on something. Commenting on resources should be done via the formalized @replies convention or the yet-to-be-formalized RE microsyntax.
2. The idea that Twitter's formalized retweet system obscures the identity of a retweeter is a red herring. In fact, the new system explicitly captures the identity of a retweeter and allows developers to perfect the display of retweets. For a given retweet, an innovative Twitter client could even show the avatar of the author of the original tweet along with the avatar of the retweeter.
3. There is no commonly understood format for retweeting across Twitter clients. This point is driven home by Dan Zarrella's need to educate everyone on how to retweet. The existence of alternative conventions, such as "via" and "h/t" (hat tip), add additional complexity to the situation. Twitter's formalized retweet system provides the commonality needed to truly harmonize the retweet experience across Twitter clients.
4. Formalizing retweets by separating metadata from data does not violate the KISS Principle. This is not to say that all metadata must be stripped from tweets. There is room for adding metadata to tweets via conventions like "The Slasher" microsyntax; however, it is important that Twitter formalizes and incorporates all metadata attributes that become popular. The formalization of community-invented metadata attributes allows Twitter to engage in a sort of "backdoor message inflation." That is, incorporating metadata attributes into the Twitter platform leaves more of each 140 character tweet for message content and yet-to-be-invented metadata attributes.

The Twitter Conservatives' movement is a reactionary movement. If Twitter followed their ideology, we would soon see tweets like:

Me too! /time 11:01pm loc 1st Street; New York, NY dev Echofon cc @nathanielmc RT @matthewmarkus I just saw a meteor! /time 11:00pm loc 2nd Avenue; New York, NY dev Web

Twitter's formalized retweet system may fail to meet expectation, but there can be no doubt that now is the time for Twitter to start the process of formalizing the retweet.