Timeline, stream, the popular format of conveying thoughts isn’t it.

From the time when blogs came, and change websites based on hierarchical document structure into long page going to the next long pages with articles stacked on another FIFO. Then Facebook’s feed, Twitter’s timeline too.

I guess, in BBS it’s called… “flat”, everything in one surface. I’d use the term, 1-dimensional, because like Timeline it is, this form has only length and simple back-reference to point on what is being replied.

What’s two dimensional? Well, Facebook and Friendfeed’s feed is an example. It has the option to comment/reply to an object and group the discussion under a single parent. It has the length (timeline) and width (reply ”timeline”). Personally, I enjoyed this type better, because unlike BBS, there’s no sectioning by Twitter. I prefer posting thoughts or sharing things in Twitter rather than having timeline dominated by replies. Friendfeed’s approach is part to blame on :P
But really, it’s a lot more comfortable that way, like Windows 7’s new taskbar grouped instances of different windows under same icon *winks*

True threaded BBS, where there’s a clear structure for reply-of-reply… what do you think? 2.5 dimensional, or 3 dimensional?

And in spirit of “what’s next”, what do you think of the next dimension in discussion? I don’t have strong visualization of it, but maybe, no… not the jargon “real-time” that’s popular recently, instead I think of, interlinking cross-platform discussion.
Some of it is visible now, with plug in like BackType can pull replies from Friendfeed, Twitter, etc. for a blog post. But we still can’t… for example.

Ann replied a blog article in Twitter, then Bob, seeing from his Tumblr make a reply blog post to it. This post by Bob can then be read as part of response to the original article, and received by Ann without the need of Bob to cross-post his response either manually or automatically.

Sounds impossible in the walled ecosystem of now though, and would give a headache if we try imagining the thousands of web services interlinking like the world wide web is not enough of a cobweb already.

BTW, I never tried Google Wave, so I don’t know how that thing would fit in (and no, I don’t know anything more than keywords: “Google, Wave, XMPP, real-time, collaboration, how is it relevant”).