Microblogging – linked data in disguise?

You may wonder what microblogging (such as Twitter and identi.ca) and linked data have in common. My hunch is: a lot. Some observations:

• each microblogging post has a URI
• many microblogging posts can be understood as (structured) statements
• in microblogging posts, one finds explicit, semantically typed links to other statements (via #foo or @somechap)
• microblogging posts connect real-world entities (such as events, books, etc.) with other real-world entities but also with documents on the Web

An example may highlight this: my identi.ca page run through OpenLink’s URI burner. Inspect the content and see how smoothly the container (the post) can be converted to linked data – the same is certainly possible for the content of the post.

Related stuff you may want to read: Benjamin Nowack’s quick thoughts on semantic microblogging and his awesome personal semantic microblogging tool called smesher as well as our related work in the SIOC domain re semantic microblogging.