A simple activity is made of simple text. An extension point has been created at the level of activities rendering for two cases:
support more HTML tags.
support @mentions.
But you may want to support a special syntax, for example:
#hashtags to feel like Twitter.
smileys to look like Skype.
Markdown to experience Buzz.
You can have more sophisticated cases to process, such as parsing the link that include in the activity's content. Because a process actually has the full access to the Activity, you can very well process based on the owner, app, and media item.