I've been toying with something Twitterish lately, and thought I needed a different word to describe the central social object. So, I started using toot, which means "tiny outburst of text". Of course, I started by making fart jokes to myself before that expansion appeared in my head. But, I think it's fun.

Toot is a white-label term for "tweet" that's not as dry as "microblog post" or "status update". It makes me giggle, which is important when you're coding for the hell of it. It would tickle me if toot caught on, didn't get trademarked, and everyone had a giggle too.

Some important answers to questions no one's asked yet:

• "tiny" means not necessarily 140 characters, but definitely not an essay.

  • A paragraph or less? Should be a single notion, easily scanned in one visual gulp.

• "outburst" means it's outloud to a bunch of people

  • Could be a public broadcast, could be an aside to a small group

• "text" does not mean these should only be plain words and sentences.

  • There's a definition of text that goes like "something (as a story or movie) considered as an object to be examined, explicated, or deconstructed"

  • And texts we send each other these days are riddled with pictures and videos and emoji and random expression. So, why not toots?