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Ask HN: What this fact means about Twitter (and web-startups in general)

30 points by tzury 16y ago

Twitter is a successful web service. Perhaps, I can say it is amazingly successful, this is nothing to be argued about. Yet, it seems to be the only popular web service which require installation of third parties and sometimes desktop applications to power-use it. That is, using gmail within your native mail client (via POP/SMTP) is nothing comparing to the gmail client itself. Same applies to youtube, facebook, friendfeed, and any other one you can think of. Those services are all shipped with a well invested web client that evolves and renew itself once in a while. Twitter.com on the other hand, is becoming a mass, or perhaps useless, if you want to follow more than 25 people. tweetdeck seems to be far better client than twitter.com This support PG's claim that twitter is a protocol, not just a web application or a web service. As such, we can treat it as torrent or any other protocol/hub. But the point I am trying to make is that we might should look at web startups from different angle. In an era which everyone is willing to move into the cloud, perhaps one should focus about infrastructures and APIs and not on a rich client development, leaving the clients and apps to the echo-system which would built around the core service. I refer to twitter.com as a demo application for the twitter capabilities, and not the the "twitter". this distinguish between twitter and twitter.com is astonishing to me, and I would be glad to hear more opinions about this. love you all, Tzury

matth 16y ago
I think this goes hand in hand with the mantra, "Do a few things, and do them right."
- jonpaul 16y ago
  Bingo. They are taking it slowly and it seems to be paying off. I mean, shit they didn't even have an official mobile Twitter client until recently. I use to be so critical of them, but I think they get it, but they want to be sure that their users don't feel like they 'sold out.' They want to actually provide values in their services and the way that they monetize.
elbenshira 16y ago
I agree, for the most part. More and more webapps are providing APIs for 3rd party developer. And why not, right? It benefits everyone. But I think Twitter understood from the beginning that they didn't need a super awesome native client. Why would they? We were blasting 140 character messages around, mimicking the way we text from our phones. Their core client device was, and still is, the mobile phone. But consider Facebook, which is generally more complicated than Twitter. If we had to deal with competing, unpolished 3rd party clients from the beginning of Facebook, I don't think Facebook would have taken off. In this case, it's good that Facebook controls the experience; it's a complicated one.
tlack 16y ago
I've been thinking about this for some time but you put it into words very well. However, I'd like to suggest that Twitter is more than a protocol; Twitter is a decent protocol and a great, huge user base. It's more than the sum of its parts I'd say.
jdietrich 16y ago
Facebook revenue (2009): ~$650m Twitter revenue (2009): ~$4m Twitter just don't seem to have a business model. They're making a paltry handful of cash from sponsored tweets and a slightly larger handful from the Bing deal. Beyond that, they don't seem to have much of a plan. I don't see how you can effectively monetise a platform like Twitter. It smacks of bad old bubble era thinking. Great protocol, great community, great service, lousy business.
- jonpaul 16y ago
  How about monetize search.twitter.com like Google does with its search? How about providing analytical tools for business, such as monitoring their brand and sentiment? How about providing businesses with user profiles on likes/dislikes, i.e. potential customers? They'll figure it out.
  - mdolon 16y ago
    What's interesting is that other businesses have already started making money off the data Twitter is providing, like http://whatthetrend.com/ http://whatthetrend.com/. It would make sense for Twitter to monetize their immense data and boost revenue, although that would probably kill these competing businesses.
- nedwin 16y ago
  "they don't seem to have much of a plan" Considering Evan William's success with Blogger and Jack Dorsey's early success with Square I think it would be disingenuous to think that they don't have plan just because they're not broadcasting it.
  - whopa 16y ago
    One success could mean you got lucky, more than one is meaningful. Blogger is Evan Williams' only business success; if Twitter actually makes enough money to justify the amount of money invested, that would be meaningful. I think it's too early to pass any judgment on Square.
  - 16y ago
BerislavLopac 16y ago
My take on this: http://berislavlopac.tumblr.com/post/615858128/the-future-of-web-browser http://berislavlopac.tumblr.com/post/615858128/the-future-of...
thunk 16y ago
A better question might be "What other protocols are we missing?"
- zackattack 16y ago
  payment protocol.
dirtyaura 16y ago
I think importance of owning UI/UX has been underestimated lately because importance of APIs and 3rd party ecosystem has been recognized. Especially in mobile space, many investors seem to suggest that don't concentrate building UX, but outsource it to 3rd parties by creating good APIs. I'm not convinced that this is the right approach as UX really defines what your service is about. Twitter might be an outlier here, it's a rare startup that is succesfully operating mainly in protocol space. Many other successful services are owning their main UX. E.g. Facebook, Dropbox, Foursquare, 37signals products to name a few. They have APIs and it's clear that those provide real value, but core experience is still defined by their UIs. Now that we are starting to have open source or inexpensive scalable solutions for backend, developing good UX is actually becoming the hard part. If you outsource this hard work to 3rd parties without providing great financial opportunities for them, you are actually not providing value .
chc 16y ago
You might say Twitter's success is unarguable, but 37signals are arguing it all the time, and pretty convincingly IMO. The term "success" has a pretty specific meaning in the context of a business — "highly profitable" — and Twitter does not fit that definition very well.
AlexBlom 16y ago
Depends how you look at things I guess. Without simplifying the discussion Twitter's value is in the stream and data they generate, not their userbase. Having encouraged an ecosystem this is a conscious choice they now seemingly want to rectify.
jhuckestein 16y ago
Tzury, I absolutely agree with you. The power of Twitter certainly lies in their API. To many other posters here: Twitter does have a strategy. At this year's Chirp the Twitter exec team and Ev Williams in particular struck me as being very strategic and thoughtful about their progress. Promoted Tweets in combination with their position as a channel (and not a tool) are a powerful and economically promising combination. And this is only one of their three pillars of monetizations. IIRC the other two were not disclosed. Another note: A company can only develop technology so fast. Twitter is currently growing by a couple of employees every week and soon they will have the resources to address many of the points mentioned here.

30 points by tzury 16y ago

matth 16y ago

I think this goes hand in hand with the mantra, "Do a few things, and do them right."

jonpaul 16y ago
Bingo. They are taking it slowly and it seems to be paying off. I mean, shit they didn't even have an official mobile Twitter client until recently. I use to be so critical of them, but I think they get it, but they want to be sure that their users don't feel like they 'sold out.' They want to actually provide values in their services and the way that they monetize.

elbenshira 16y ago

I agree, for the most part. More and more webapps are providing APIs for 3rd party developer. And why not, right? It benefits everyone. But I think Twitter understood from the beginning that they didn't need a super awesome native client. Why would they? We were blasting 140 character messages around, mimicking the way we text from our phones. Their core client device was, and still is, the mobile phone. But consider Facebook, which is generally more complicated than Twitter. If we had to deal with competing, unpolished 3rd party clients from the beginning of Facebook, I don't think Facebook would have taken off. In this case, it's good that Facebook controls the experience; it's a complicated one.

tlack 16y ago

I've been thinking about this for some time but you put it into words very well. However, I'd like to suggest that Twitter is more than a protocol; Twitter is a decent protocol and a great, huge user base. It's more than the sum of its parts I'd say.

jdietrich 16y ago

Facebook revenue (2009): ~$650m Twitter revenue (2009): ~$4m Twitter just don't seem to have a business model. They're making a paltry handful of cash from sponsored tweets and a slightly larger handful from the Bing deal. Beyond that, they don't seem to have much of a plan. I don't see how you can effectively monetise a platform like Twitter. It smacks of bad old bubble era thinking. Great protocol, great community, great service, lousy business.

jonpaul 16y ago
How about monetize search.twitter.com like Google does with its search? How about providing analytical tools for business, such as monitoring their brand and sentiment? How about providing businesses with user profiles on likes/dislikes, i.e. potential customers? They'll figure it out.
- mdolon 16y ago
  What's interesting is that other businesses have already started making money off the data Twitter is providing, like http://whatthetrend.com/ http://whatthetrend.com/. It would make sense for Twitter to monetize their immense data and boost revenue, although that would probably kill these competing businesses.
nedwin 16y ago
"they don't seem to have much of a plan" Considering Evan William's success with Blogger and Jack Dorsey's early success with Square I think it would be disingenuous to think that they don't have plan just because they're not broadcasting it.
- whopa 16y ago
  One success could mean you got lucky, more than one is meaningful. Blogger is Evan Williams' only business success; if Twitter actually makes enough money to justify the amount of money invested, that would be meaningful. I think it's too early to pass any judgment on Square.
- 16y ago

BerislavLopac 16y ago

My take on this: http://berislavlopac.tumblr.com/post/615858128/the-future-of-web-browser http://berislavlopac.tumblr.com/post/615858128/the-future-of...

thunk 16y ago

A better question might be "What other protocols are we missing?"

zackattack 16y ago
payment protocol.

dirtyaura 16y ago

I think importance of owning UI/UX has been underestimated lately because importance of APIs and 3rd party ecosystem has been recognized. Especially in mobile space, many investors seem to suggest that don't concentrate building UX, but outsource it to 3rd parties by creating good APIs. I'm not convinced that this is the right approach as UX really defines what your service is about. Twitter might be an outlier here, it's a rare startup that is succesfully operating mainly in protocol space. Many other successful services are owning their main UX. E.g. Facebook, Dropbox, Foursquare, 37signals products to name a few. They have APIs and it's clear that those provide real value, but core experience is still defined by their UIs. Now that we are starting to have open source or inexpensive scalable solutions for backend, developing good UX is actually becoming the hard part. If you outsource this hard work to 3rd parties without providing great financial opportunities for them, you are actually not providing value .

chc 16y ago

You might say Twitter's success is unarguable, but 37signals are arguing it all the time, and pretty convincingly IMO. The term "success" has a pretty specific meaning in the context of a business — "highly profitable" — and Twitter does not fit that definition very well.

AlexBlom 16y ago

Depends how you look at things I guess. Without simplifying the discussion Twitter's value is in the stream and data they generate, not their userbase. Having encouraged an ecosystem this is a conscious choice they now seemingly want to rectify.

jhuckestein 16y ago

Tzury, I absolutely agree with you. The power of Twitter certainly lies in their API. To many other posters here: Twitter does have a strategy. At this year's Chirp the Twitter exec team and Ev Williams in particular struck me as being very strategic and thoughtful about their progress. Promoted Tweets in combination with their position as a channel (and not a tool) are a powerful and economically promising combination. And this is only one of their three pillars of monetizations. IIRC the other two were not disclosed. Another note: A company can only develop technology so fast. Twitter is currently growing by a couple of employees every week and soon they will have the resources to address many of the points mentioned here.