Re: Wire Posts in bp 1.2
I think one of the crucial issues is that you are mixing content with meta data. Twitter does this for obvious reasons, such as making it work well with text messaging. I like what Andy said about BuddyPress not being Facebook or Twitter, but one thing BuddyPress is… is WordPress.
WordPress does a great job of separating content from meta data. Blog Posts have content and they have tags. Why not use something similar here? Why not let the meta data be separate?
Just add a tag box! Any tag that starts with @ means that the tag name is really a username. Now think about the WP tag box. You type any tags in, separated by commas and press ‘Add tag’. The tags automagically get separated into their own little icons. A similar thing could happen in BP, but when @user tags are added, they get displayed as the user’s full name. You could have an interface that allows for entering @username or just allows the user to type a full name and have it autocomplete. Using auto complete is easier in a tag box than in a content box.
WARNING: Whatever you do, be very careful! If you merge content and meta data now, it may be very difficult to separate them later. In 1.1, wall posts had their content separated from the meta data specifying whose wall it was on. Now with 1.2 it sounds like all of my wall content will be modified to say who I was talking to. Then, if you change your mind and want to separate them out again in 1.3, you will have to modify the content again to remove the meta data.
