Inventing Twitter: An iterative approach to new media development

Abstract

This article analyzes the creation of Twitter by developing an iterative approach that accounts for feedback loops between developers and users, sequences of interaction between these actors over time, and the various identities that media technologies enact during these processes. To implement this approach, the article integrates studies of remediation strategies, analyses of the role of users in shaping technological change, and scholarship on the multiplicity of technological objects. This approach enables theorizing about novel processes of new media development characterized by the interweaving of production and use activities. It also expands the heuristic reach of established approaches to new media development (namely, work on remediation and user agency). The theoretical implications of this approach are discussed.