3 ms·

I thought of micro-blogging before I knew twitter existed. Oh, and I think twitter is a failed idea. It mostly has turned to another form of RSS feeds. The int

by hasenj 16y ago

I thought of micro-blogging before I knew twitter existed. Oh, and I think twitter is a failed idea. It mostly has turned to another form of RSS feeds. The intended use-case has failed (small updates on your daily life, e.g. "I'm drinking tea with my wife"). This idea will also fail; you can't tell people how to use a service. If you allow people to post 30 second videos, they'll use it to send messages to each other instead of expressing opinions on public issues. Or, they might just post short funny videos ("epic fail" videos, etc).

derefr 16y ago
> twitter is a failed idea Nobody cares about Twitter-the-idea, and that's never what anyone means any more when they use the term. What everyone loves is Twitter-the-platform, which is a huge success. > This idea will also fail; you can't tell people how to use a service. Yes, you can. When the site is small, you can manually moderate all submissions, literally telling people how they may use it. After the site grows, the "base" will continue to obey the site's culture. As long as the base has more power (in some metric or another) the site will continue in that direction without further work. (This is basically how HN has been set up.) Note that this might keep the site small—like HN, and unlike Twitter. But that's still entirely monetizable, especially if you have a much larger viewing population than submitting population.
lsc 16y ago
I know a guy who not only thought of the idea, but implemented it. He wrote a AIM to LiveJournal bot. You send it an instant message, and it would post to LiveJournal. I mean, he thought the idea was silly and not very useful, but it was an actual implementation of micro blogging before twitter arrived. I am certain there were other implementations that I don't know about.

3 ms·

I thought of micro-blogging before I knew twitter existed. Oh, and I think twitter is a failed idea. It mostly has turned to another form of RSS feeds. The int

by hasenj 16y ago

derefr 16y ago
> twitter is a failed idea Nobody cares about Twitter-the-idea, and that's never what anyone means any more when they use the term. What everyone loves is Twitter-the-platform, which is a huge success. > This idea will also fail; you can't tell people how to use a service. Yes, you can. When the site is small, you can manually moderate all submissions, literally telling people how they may use it. After the site grows, the "base" will continue to obey the site's culture. As long as the base has more power (in some metric or another) the site will continue in that direction without further work. (This is basically how HN has been set up.) Note that this might keep the site small—like HN, and unlike Twitter. But that's still entirely monetizable, especially if you have a much larger viewing population than submitting population.
lsc 16y ago
I know a guy who not only thought of the idea, but implemented it. He wrote a AIM to LiveJournal bot. You send it an instant message, and it would post to LiveJournal. I mean, he thought the idea was silly and not very useful, but it was an actual implementation of micro blogging before twitter arrived. I am certain there were other implementations that I don't know about.