In this BBC piece, an IBM engineer on the Isle of Wight, shows off the 16th century thatched cottage that he’s wired with sensors and connected to Twitter. In the article that accompanies the video, he uses a term he’s apparently coined for objects that tweet: “tweetjects.”
I’m here to try and stage a lexicographical intervention. As the editor of Wired’s Jargon Watch column for 12 years and as a computer and Internet terms consultant for the Oxford American Dictionary, I’m asking, no I’m begging, please don’t call ’em “tweetjects!” “Blobjects” was bad enough, but at least it made a kind of ham-handed sense. Then we had “blogjects.” I’m still trying to get that one out of my mouth. Now tweetjects? Sounds like a breakfast cereal that’s too good to taste any good. The brilliant American lexicographer (and CRAFT magazine contributor) Erin McKean says that we vote with our usage. Please people, vote “No” on this tortured term.
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