Could that really be your next tweet?

Twitter has become a great resource in today’s journalistic landscape. In fact Twitter is a great resource in general. However at its basic core, the fundamentals of the microblogging site is that it is an amazing distraction.

Yes Twitter can be a super time waster. What’s even more time consuming are some of theTwitter resources out there. There are plenty of them, ones that feed to your vanity measuring your influence (telling you how “powerful” you are in the tweetosphere), ones that aggregate your tweets and tells you which tweets will get you more followers and ones that exposes the kind of tweeter you are.

All these resources are quite fun to spend an hour or two or three of your day getting lost in the humour or insight some them provide. However nothing ensues as much hilarity as the newly discovered ‘That Can Be My Next Tweet‘. The web application scans a Twitter stream of your choice and churns out what could possibly be the user’s next tweet. It also gives you the option to post this possible tweet to your stream.

The app was developed by Wimer Hazenberg of the Dutch graphic design firm Booreiland, That Can Be My Next Tweet apparently comes with future tweets “based on the DNA of your existing messages.” The tweets however seem more like a random selection of words and half phrases than a logical thought pattern.

I couldn’t help myself I had to find out what Memeburn’s possible future tweets were. Some real gems came up but my personal favourite is this one: “Our lives are digital footprint leave behind a truism that will look like to make it but conversation can!” I am not exactly sure what this one is getting at: “Hacker group buying GoDaddy CEO kills elephant and hipsters Wifi Trip: 5 pros and Media Management?”

The auto-generated tweets work with the idea that most users’ tweets tend to follow the same thought process, mention the same topics and places using the same terms and abbreviations. Interestingly enough headline driven feeds like Memeburn’s provide some plausible options while personal accounts provide a good laugh. Though when I ran @charliesheen and @drunkhulk’s feeds I was unable to tell the real tweets from the ‘That Can Be Your Next Tweet’ ones.

I tried out my personal account and I don’t think I shall be posting any of those tweets to my stream. Though some them left me pondering.

Here some of the other accounts I ran through ‘That Can Be Your Next Tweet’:

@charliesheen

@drunkhulk

@richardbranson

@aplusk (Ashton Kutcher)

@CNN