I disagree.
It's in the interest of both Google and Twitter to resolve this, but I think the issue should be resolved by Google. Twitter should not use the meta-description tag for anything other than its purpose.
It's in the interest of both Google and Twitter to resolve this, but I think the issue should be resolved by Google. Twitter should not use the meta-description tag for anything other than its purpose.
Description: Defines a description of the document
The "document" in this case is a specific tweet which can best be described with its content since it is a self-imposed summary as-is. In short, you're wrong.
It's tempting to have a description that describes all your pages simply for easiness (hell W3S goes ahead and does it wrong in that example) but it should define what the page is about, an abstract of a document if you will.
With that said though, I see your point. I still stand by the fact that Google should be the one to parse this information and Twitter shouldn't be preparing it specifically for Google. Similar to how some YahooSearchMonkey developers are doing it with yahoo:
http://csarven.ca/temp/ysm_serp-07.png http://identi.ca/notice/2691626
Twitter's goal is not "to make organizing our data easier for Google."
This isn't Google's problem; it is Twitter's. Whether or not Twitter cares is a different story entirely.
The META element can be used to identify properties of a document (e.g., author, expiration date, a list of key words, etc.) and assign values to those properties.
No matter where you choose your source, meta elements apply to the document. The document is not the web site. It is an individual page such as a tweet, a user's profile, or the homepage.
Is that authoritative enough?
If the purpose of the meta attribute is to provide a description of the resource being presented, a description of the person behind the messages is much better than a description of the service.
And I still stand by the fact that this is a problem for google to make their search more relevant rather than a problem with twitter's data structure.
I think so, yes.