5 ms·

The New York Times’ most famous tweet is ten years old

164 points by uptown 10y ago

hbosch 10y ago
Link is giving me a massive, jumbled page of mixed characters suggesting something is broken. If you're seeing what I'm seeing, here is a Google Cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WUGP7HoVukwJ:www.niemanlab.org/2017/03/word-up-this-is-the-story-behind-the-new-york-times-most-famous-tweet-which-is-10-years-old-today/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WUGP7Ho...
- tompic823 10y ago
  Do you have uBlock origin installed?
officelineback 10y ago
That is hilarious. The humblebrag one was pretty good, too.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
The New York Times has always been good at digital things. They have a decent API and have digitized a lot of historical articles from the 20th century.
- passivepinetree 10y ago
  And they have a decent tech interview process! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/jobs/nyt-news-applications-developer.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/jobs/nyt-news-appli...
- NearAP 10y ago
  I've tried using their API and the one for comments is not reliable. It typically errors out (abruptly) when you're retrieving comments for an article. Posts/comments to their developer forum also typically goes unanswered for months and sometimes never.
- danso 10y ago
  Speaking of their API, a recently new one is the Archive API (I only noticed it this past year), which makes it much easier to download all of their article metadata. It used to be you had to paginate through their articles API, which was limited in its number of paginated results. Now you can get all of the articles and their metadata for any given year and month, which makes it a great place for practicing data mining and other classification techniques. https://developer.nytimes.com/archive_api.json#/README https://developer.nytimes.com/archive_api.json#/README Example result for 2016-11 (around 18mb in size): http://stash.compciv.org/2017/nytimes-archive-2016-11.json http://stash.compciv.org/2017/nytimes-archive-2016-11.json
shortsightedsid 10y ago
It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. - Grace Hopper
phillco 10y ago
It's so weird to think that Twitter used to be insignificant enough that a random software engineer could just tweet to the NY Time's social media account at will, without going through all the hoops of a social media team. Kudos to them for keeping it up, it's a great tweet.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Sorta like when the web first got started and domain names weren't in the public imagination yet: https://www.wired.com/2005/08/tech/ https://www.wired.com/2005/08/tech/
  - rmason 10y ago
    I remember in the early days of the web an interviewer asked Ted Turner about the web and whether there would ever be a cnn.com. He went off on a rant about the web being I think a fad and that the answer would always be a no. Two days later in August 1995 CNN Interactive launched at cnn.com. Press wanted to know if Turner had changed his mind. Guy in charge of the site said probably no but Ted doesn't understand the net at all. It was decided this was a slam dunk so we went ahead and launched it without telling him. Turner never understood the Internet and it came back to bite him big time when after merging with Time-Warner in 1996 he went ahead with the others on the board in 1999 and bought AOL. In the crash that followed he proceeded to lose about three quarters of his net worth.
- joemi 10y ago
  It's a bit less weird when you consider the fact that the random software engineer is the person who set up the NYT's social media account.
ouid 10y ago
Alternatively, twitter is more than ten years old.
- mikeevans 10y ago
  Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the first Tweet: https://twitter.com/jack/status/20 https://twitter.com/jack/status/20
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mudil 10y ago
CIA's first tweet was great: "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet."
- jlewis7272 10y ago
  "but we are listening..."
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    The CIA are cool now guys stop it!
glibgil 10y ago
And like so many things from ten years ago... cringe
NamTaf 10y ago
If this isn't a perfect example of how your "hacky prototype" will never be replaced with a fully developed solution until absolutely necessary, I don't know what is.

164 points by uptown 10y ago

Link is giving me a massive, jumbled page of mixed characters suggesting something is broken. If you're seeing what I'm seeing, here is a Google Cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WUGP7HoVukwJ:www.niemanlab.org/2017/03/word-up-this-is-the-story-behind-the-new-york-times-most-famous-tweet-which-is-10-years-old-today/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WUGP7Ho...

tompic823 10y ago
Do you have uBlock origin installed?

officelineback 10y ago

That is hilarious. The humblebrag one was pretty good, too.

TorKlingberg 10y ago

The New York Times has always been good at digital things. They have a decent API and have digitized a lot of historical articles from the 20th century.

passivepinetree 10y ago
And they have a decent tech interview process! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/jobs/nyt-news-applications-developer.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/jobs/nyt-news-appli...
NearAP 10y ago
I've tried using their API and the one for comments is not reliable. It typically errors out (abruptly) when you're retrieving comments for an article. Posts/comments to their developer forum also typically goes unanswered for months and sometimes never.
danso 10y ago
Speaking of their API, a recently new one is the Archive API (I only noticed it this past year), which makes it much easier to download all of their article metadata. It used to be you had to paginate through their articles API, which was limited in its number of paginated results. Now you can get all of the articles and their metadata for any given year and month, which makes it a great place for practicing data mining and other classification techniques. https://developer.nytimes.com/archive_api.json#/README https://developer.nytimes.com/archive_api.json#/README Example result for 2016-11 (around 18mb in size): http://stash.compciv.org/2017/nytimes-archive-2016-11.json http://stash.compciv.org/2017/nytimes-archive-2016-11.json

shortsightedsid 10y ago

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. - Grace Hopper

phillco 10y ago

It's so weird to think that Twitter used to be insignificant enough that a random software engineer could just tweet to the NY Time's social media account at will, without going through all the hoops of a social media team. Kudos to them for keeping it up, it's a great tweet.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Apocryphon 10y ago
Sorta like when the web first got started and domain names weren't in the public imagination yet: https://www.wired.com/2005/08/tech/ https://www.wired.com/2005/08/tech/
- rmason 10y ago
  I remember in the early days of the web an interviewer asked Ted Turner about the web and whether there would ever be a cnn.com. He went off on a rant about the web being I think a fad and that the answer would always be a no. Two days later in August 1995 CNN Interactive launched at cnn.com. Press wanted to know if Turner had changed his mind. Guy in charge of the site said probably no but Ted doesn't understand the net at all. It was decided this was a slam dunk so we went ahead and launched it without telling him. Turner never understood the Internet and it came back to bite him big time when after merging with Time-Warner in 1996 he went ahead with the others on the board in 1999 and bought AOL. In the crash that followed he proceeded to lose about three quarters of his net worth.
joemi 10y ago
It's a bit less weird when you consider the fact that the random software engineer is the person who set up the NYT's social media account.

ouid 10y ago

Alternatively, twitter is more than ten years old.

mikeevans 10y ago
Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the first Tweet: https://twitter.com/jack/status/20 https://twitter.com/jack/status/20

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mudil 10y ago

CIA's first tweet was great: "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet."

jlewis7272 10y ago
"but we are listening..."
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  The CIA are cool now guys stop it!

glibgil 10y ago

And like so many things from ten years ago... cringe

NamTaf 10y ago

If this isn't a perfect example of how your "hacky prototype" will never be replaced with a fully developed solution until absolutely necessary, I don't know what is.