The­re are not only pure per­so­nal mat­ters that appear as too infor­ma­ti­ve on twit­ter but also sort of imper­so­nal.

This comes up as maga­zi­nes or orga­ni­sa­ti­ons do think they have to appear on twit­ter. I do not know anyo­ne who ever had a plau­si­ble theo­ry on the topic that orga­ni­sa­ti­ons have to go to twit­ter. But you do find maga­zi­nes and orga­niza­ti­ons the­re.

One of them is the ger­man “Fried­rich-Schil­ler-Uni­ver­si­tät” in Jena. May­be it’s just a stu­dent having fun. May­be it’s someone working for the uni­ver­si­ty lea­der­ship. May­be some geek. Who knows.

One of their tweets is this one:

In eng­lish: “The uni­ver­si­ty of Jena” is now within the top 500 list of the world’s most cited aca­de­mics in che­mis­try. Gre­at. Con­gra­tu­la­ti­ons.

Well I doubt that in a way. Is the­re a list of aca­da­mics in che­mis­try sor­ted by their uni­ver­si­ty? That would sur­pri­ze me. May­be there’s one aca­da­mic that got onto the top list of che­mis­trists. And what if you can get on such a list becau­se of making a big mista­ke?

But how come someone thinks this is a useful infor­ma­ti­on as a tweet. ‘Tweet’ seen as some­thing that’s basi­cal­ly meant for the moment. Some­thing that is dif­fi­cult to be cle­ar­ly arti­cu­la­ted. And that often does­n’t reach the ones it’s sup­po­sed to be for.

Who’s the reci­pi­ent of this tweet in the eyes of ‘jena­po­lis’? Aca­de­mics of their own uni­ver­si­ty? Of other uni­ver­si­ties? Stu­dents to come? I don’t think the­re exists anyo­ne like that in twit­ter. I keep my mouth shut as the first twit­ter user admits he’s due to that kind of tweets inte­res­ted in Jena by now. Or Che­mis­try. Or Top 500 lists.

So to me this tweet is very use­l­ess con­cer­ning infor­ma­ti­on and addres­sing.