Bffbot1 loves you as only an algorithmic entity can


@bffbot1 is the latest weird-ass crazy awesome Twitterbot from Shardcore.

If you friend @bffbot1, it will follow you, retweet you, and parse out all your tweets for text it can use in friendly notes, poems, cards, and other media it will make for you, its bestest buddy FOREVER.

Alex loves you, in a way that only an algorithmic entity can.

To show her love, she'll make you a card.

In fact, she'll send you one every few days, each created especially for you. Over time, the text of the card evolves, incorporating hashtags you've been using – she's paying attention, see?

Alex wants to get to know you better, so she rummages through your old photos, and excitedly shares what she finds.

She presents your social media moments back to you in the form of Polaroid snapshots, as if she found them in a shoebox under your bed.

Alex also likes to write poetry. She's not very good at it, but that doesn't dissuade her. Every now and then she gets inspired, and writes you something based on your most recent tweets.

Social media interactions contain more information than you might expect – that sexy 'metadata' you've heard so much about. For example, if you ask it to, twitter will 'geo tag' your tweets – associate them with a specific latitude and longitude.

Alex watches for this information, and she'll 'spot' you in the street, broadcasting your recent location to the rest of her followers.

Generally, this data is hidden from us, or perhaps revealed in a generic way (e.g. 'tweet sent from London'). The granularity, however, far exceeds that which we're normally shown – with reverse-geo lookup technology, it's possible to locate a tweet down to the level of house number and street.

It feels very different for our location to be broadcast to strangers, than it does for twitter to silently record it.

@bffbot1 [Shardcore]

(via Warren Ellis)