4 ms·

Such an utter lack of understanding of Twitter's service model I've rarely seen. Message delivery was never Twitter's problem; dealing with persistance (I want

Such an utter lack of understanding of Twitter's service model I've rarely seen. Message delivery was never Twitter's problem; dealing with persistance (I want my messages when I'm good and ready thanks, not when the system wants to push them to me - READ: LIKE SMS MULTICAST!) is. Christ. Downvote me all you like, but I'm embarrassed this story made 21 points.

jrockway 18y ago
That's what Twitter is, true, but it's not necessarily what users want. I'm sure if the Indian service was one day called "Twitter", people would keep using "Twitter".
axod 18y ago
storing messages isn't really a hard problem either though.
- gaius 18y ago
  Maintaining consistent state across a distributed system is a hard problem. Maybe Twitter are solving the wrong problem, that's for their investors to judge, but the problem they have decided to solve is a difficult one.
  - axod 18y ago
    Why does it need to be distributed? ok, ok... I give in. It's a devilishly hard problem at the cutting edge of science.
    - tx 18y ago
      Axod, you're absolutely right, I am amazed that your voice is drawning in this river of absurd. Twitter IS a freaking reimplementation of SMS, a not-too-hard problem that has been solved many many many times before (on a much weaker hardware). Most folks here just don't get it. Perhaps it's because texting has never been really big in US like it has always been in Europe. Moreover, Twitter's load is a joke compared to what leading telecoms have been dealing with for many years. If there were serious about recruiting they could have hired someone with experience to do just that. Without this typical "distributed everything" mantra. Twitter isn't freaking Google or Amazon, they have ZERO computational complexity, they simply move (and store) up to 400 bytes of data for _not even a million_ of active daily users, how hard could it be? I suspect the reason we see such embarassing technical failures is because software engineering these days is less about engineering and more about playing Lego with pre-existing open source parts, even if they don't fit together or even don't fit at all.
      - dcurtis 18y ago
        I've never seen a "leading telecom" messaging system send my single message simultaneously to a thousand people via email, sms, IM, and a web interface within a minute. SMS by itself is slow, unreliable, expensive, and only goes point-to-point.
        tx 18y ago
        SMS is more capable, by far more reliable and complex system than Twitter. (guess how do I know?) Most Americans are unaware of it because it has never been popular here due to pricing differences but it's changing. SMS are multi-casted more often than you think and the load I've seen were several times that of Twitter. I am not calling anyone stupid or incapable, I suspect it's just a side effect of "release early, release often" mantra. And don't exaggerate for the sake of exaggeration: how many Twitter users have "thousands" of followers?
        maximilian 18y ago
        I actually think quite a few people have "thousands" of followers. I don't have anything to back this up, but I think you'd be surprised as to how many people follow the more popular people on twitter.
        axod 18y ago
        In the UK, SMS is pretty well used, very cheap, and does not only go point to point. You can specify a list of destinations in each message. Phone carriers like O2 routinely send SMS out to their entire customer base announcing new offers/deals (Unless you text stop). Football announcements - if you opt in, as soon as a goal is scored, they send SMS messages out to thousands of interested fans instantaneously. I used to run a ringtone website and dealt with these sorts of things. Perhaps SMS is slow and unreliable in the US, but not in europe. Each message has with it a message longetivity which says how long it should stick around in the system trying to deliver itself. Also you have successful send notifications for that rare instance a message could not be delivered.
    - gaius 18y ago
      Well, that's kinda sorta my point.
      - axod 18y ago
        I was being sarcastic you know...
chaostheory 18y ago
yes one of gupshup's main tasks is akin to something like SMS multicast, but gupshup also saves these SMSs where people can browse them... the main difference is that I don't see the 'following' feature... I don't feel that it's completely different from twitter, then again I could have missed something UPDATE: I'm wrong - people with only cell phones aren't going to browse SMS update histories often if at all. You're right; though their solution isn't that far off given the existence of Jruby + Rails
josefresco 18y ago
I think we can all agree Twitter probably made some mistakes, however articles like these which attempt to further shame Twitter are absurd and wasteful of all our time.
tx 18y ago
Such an utter lack of understanding of SMS messaging I've rarely seen. Twitter is a joke compared to what it takes to do SMS properly. Not only SMS needs to be persistent, but they also need to be stored and accurately retreived for up to 5 years, which is a goverment regulation in most countries. Moreover, delivery rate needs to be 100%, period. SMS is not a time waster, even pacemakers send SMS messages from inside of human bodies when their batteries need to be replaced. You can't afford to drop those. I know that the "culture" of Silicon Valley is not to criticize, so let me put it this way: HIRE CAREFULLY for your startup, especially when it comes to engineering. Even if you're solving a trivial issue.
- paul 18y ago
  Perhaps you've never used SMS? (or at least not in the US) They are frequently late or dropped. (and we pay $0.30/sms for the privilege)
- einarvollset 18y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I don't think SMS on a truly large scale is trivial. I do, however, think SMS messaging is fundamentally different to what Twitter is doing. The former is unicast: I send you a message. It needs to be stored somewhere (your SMS inbox). Twitter is multicast: I send a message, everyone who subscribe to me needs to get that message. Now, misunderstand me correctly; I don't think this is anything new. My former boss built tools (over 20 years ago) that ran such systems as the NYSE, Swiss Air-traffic control, etc that did fault-tolerant multicast. And the uptime there was somewhat better than Twitter. What led me to post the original comment was this: They are not solving the same problem, but if they were their architecture would be just as flawed as Twitter's.

jrockway 18y ago

That's what Twitter is, true, but it's not necessarily what users want. I'm sure if the Indian service was one day called "Twitter", people would keep using "Twitter".

axod 18y ago

storing messages isn't really a hard problem either though.

gaius 18y ago
Maintaining consistent state across a distributed system is a hard problem. Maybe Twitter are solving the wrong problem, that's for their investors to judge, but the problem they have decided to solve is a difficult one.
- axod 18y ago
  Why does it need to be distributed? ok, ok... I give in. It's a devilishly hard problem at the cutting edge of science.
  - tx 18y ago
    Axod, you're absolutely right, I am amazed that your voice is drawning in this river of absurd. Twitter IS a freaking reimplementation of SMS, a not-too-hard problem that has been solved many many many times before (on a much weaker hardware). Most folks here just don't get it. Perhaps it's because texting has never been really big in US like it has always been in Europe. Moreover, Twitter's load is a joke compared to what leading telecoms have been dealing with for many years. If there were serious about recruiting they could have hired someone with experience to do just that. Without this typical "distributed everything" mantra. Twitter isn't freaking Google or Amazon, they have ZERO computational complexity, they simply move (and store) up to 400 bytes of data for _not even a million_ of active daily users, how hard could it be? I suspect the reason we see such embarassing technical failures is because software engineering these days is less about engineering and more about playing Lego with pre-existing open source parts, even if they don't fit together or even don't fit at all.
    - dcurtis 18y ago
      I've never seen a "leading telecom" messaging system send my single message simultaneously to a thousand people via email, sms, IM, and a web interface within a minute. SMS by itself is slow, unreliable, expensive, and only goes point-to-point.
      - tx 18y ago
        SMS is more capable, by far more reliable and complex system than Twitter. (guess how do I know?) Most Americans are unaware of it because it has never been popular here due to pricing differences but it's changing. SMS are multi-casted more often than you think and the load I've seen were several times that of Twitter. I am not calling anyone stupid or incapable, I suspect it's just a side effect of "release early, release often" mantra. And don't exaggerate for the sake of exaggeration: how many Twitter users have "thousands" of followers?
        maximilian 18y ago
        I actually think quite a few people have "thousands" of followers. I don't have anything to back this up, but I think you'd be surprised as to how many people follow the more popular people on twitter.
      - axod 18y ago
        In the UK, SMS is pretty well used, very cheap, and does not only go point to point. You can specify a list of destinations in each message. Phone carriers like O2 routinely send SMS out to their entire customer base announcing new offers/deals (Unless you text stop). Football announcements - if you opt in, as soon as a goal is scored, they send SMS messages out to thousands of interested fans instantaneously. I used to run a ringtone website and dealt with these sorts of things. Perhaps SMS is slow and unreliable in the US, but not in europe. Each message has with it a message longetivity which says how long it should stick around in the system trying to deliver itself. Also you have successful send notifications for that rare instance a message could not be delivered.
  - gaius 18y ago
    Well, that's kinda sorta my point.
    - axod 18y ago
      I was being sarcastic you know...

chaostheory 18y ago

yes one of gupshup's main tasks is akin to something like SMS multicast, but gupshup also saves these SMSs where people can browse them... the main difference is that I don't see the 'following' feature... I don't feel that it's completely different from twitter, then again I could have missed something UPDATE: I'm wrong - people with only cell phones aren't going to browse SMS update histories often if at all. You're right; though their solution isn't that far off given the existence of Jruby + Rails

josefresco 18y ago

I think we can all agree Twitter probably made some mistakes, however articles like these which attempt to further shame Twitter are absurd and wasteful of all our time.

tx 18y ago

Such an utter lack of understanding of SMS messaging I've rarely seen. Twitter is a joke compared to what it takes to do SMS properly. Not only SMS needs to be persistent, but they also need to be stored and accurately retreived for up to 5 years, which is a goverment regulation in most countries. Moreover, delivery rate needs to be 100%, period. SMS is not a time waster, even pacemakers send SMS messages from inside of human bodies when their batteries need to be replaced. You can't afford to drop those. I know that the "culture" of Silicon Valley is not to criticize, so let me put it this way: HIRE CAREFULLY for your startup, especially when it comes to engineering. Even if you're solving a trivial issue.

paul 18y ago
Perhaps you've never used SMS? (or at least not in the US) They are frequently late or dropped. (and we pay $0.30/sms for the privilege)
einarvollset 18y ago
Don't get me wrong, I don't think SMS on a truly large scale is trivial. I do, however, think SMS messaging is fundamentally different to what Twitter is doing. The former is unicast: I send you a message. It needs to be stored somewhere (your SMS inbox). Twitter is multicast: I send a message, everyone who subscribe to me needs to get that message. Now, misunderstand me correctly; I don't think this is anything new. My former boss built tools (over 20 years ago) that ran such systems as the NYSE, Swiss Air-traffic control, etc that did fault-tolerant multicast. And the uptime there was somewhat better than Twitter. What led me to post the original comment was this: They are not solving the same problem, but if they were their architecture would be just as flawed as Twitter's.