6 ms·

Is the sms -> internet/ server -> sms pathway tied up in business patents by Twitter? I am sure I am (sort of) underestimating, but Twitter seems like a weeken

Is the sms -> internet/ server -> sms pathway tied up in business patents by Twitter? I am sure I am (sort of) underestimating, but Twitter seems like a weekend project for a couple of decent hackers; if they piss enough people off is there any reason to stick with them except for (VERY non-trivial) first past the post market share?

pavel_lishin 16y ago
Ooh, another "it's just a weekend project!" comment. Next step: convince everyone to use your weekend project, instead of Twitter. Allowing people to import all of their tweets and friends would be helpful, so be sure to implement that. Next next step: Handle all of Twitter's traffic. Consistently, and you not only have to do it better than they did in the beginning, but better than they do it now.
- jonursenbach 16y ago
  Also create mobile clients for everybody to use. And don't forget about an API.
  - cygwin98 16y ago
    I don't think this will be an issue if he manages to maintain the same API as Twitter.
    - ceejayoz 16y ago
      How many Twitter clients support third-party API endpoints?
      - tofumatt 16y ago
        Ironically, I believe Tweetie 2 used to, before Twitter bought it. It allowed a lot of advanced customization.
        ceejayoz 16y ago
        It actually still does, for now. I wonder if the #dickbar shows up on third-party timelines...
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Here's the thing. If it were anything other than a major endeavor to replace twitter it would have been done by now. It is a big problem and not just from an engineering standpoint. The same for facebook. On the plus side, for competition at least, as hardware technology advances it'll become easier and cheaper to match twitter's capabilities with less effort.
forkandwait 16y ago
Rather than downvoting my rather heavily caveatted remarks, perhaps you could answer the question: Is there a patent encumbrance that makes this more than a technical problem? EDIT: moved "heavily qualified" to something more idiomatic.
- djcapelis 16y ago
  Since it's sometimes considered nice to explain a downvote, I wanted to mention I downvoted you for spending time telling us how qualified you were instead of just restating your question in a simpler way. I don't know why your other post was downvoted, but probably because people think it's not an interesting question, could be determined by actually going to Google yourself and doing your own homework/search and most people don't feel like patents, if they exist, are the problem with twitter's dominance.
  - forkandwait 16y ago
    Well, you don't seem to understand what "qualified" means in the context written -- when I said that my response was qualified it meant that I put caveats around it ("I qualified my response"). Sorry if I was unclear.
    - djcapelis 16y ago
      Ah ha. I understand how it could have been used in that context, just failed to understand that it was. Thanks for clarifying.
  - whatusername 16y ago
    Actually -- by saying "very qualified remarks" forkandwait was not talking about his/her education. S/He was instead referring to the fact that by calling the problem of getting market share "(VERY non-trivial)" in the OP - they were well aware of the issue and asking a simple question about twitter's patent protection (or lack thereof).
  - wtn 16y ago
    Literacy fail.
defen 16y ago
Instead of doing that, a team of one computer literate person could fork StatusNet, and you could spend the rest of the weekend trying to convince Ashton Kutcher and Charlie Sheen to join your service, and buying hardware to support them.
dreyfiz 16y ago
No. http://www.google.com/patents?q=Twitter&btnG=Search+Patents http://www.google.com/patents?q=Twitter&btnG=Search+Pate... Although they did make Loren Brichter patent "pull to refresh": http://www.google.com/patents?q=Loren+Brichter&btnG=Search+Patents http://www.google.com/patents?q=Loren+Brichter&btnG=Sear... Also, please don’t be "I could clone that in a weekend" guy. Everyone hates that guy. http://blog.bitquabit.com/2009/07/01/one-which-i-call-out-hacker-news/ http://blog.bitquabit.com/2009/07/01/one-which-i-call-out-ha... You could make a piece of crap implementing Twitter’s models and create/read/update/delete in a weekend. Or really, in under an hour with Rails scaffolding. Congratulations, you have now proved that you can guess the schema from using an app. You don’t have a product, or even one tenth of a product. First-past-the-post has nothing to do with Twitter’s success; polish and thought and sweating the details has everything to do with it.
cygwin98 16y ago
I don't know why you got so many down votes. Maybe HN folks got too sick of armchair architects/hackers. Honestly, what your said somehow resonated my inside hacker. I think lots of hackers share similar opinion --- as hardware/network are getting so much cheaper nowadays, it may be very feasible to build and operate "web-scale" apps like Twitter and Reddit with small but capable man powers. Lots of people here agree that the main problem is less of a technical one, but more of a business one --- how to jump start a community in an area especially with a seemingly winning market leader over there. Perhaps, there are still opportunities in the area. Maybe Twitter will be the next Google or maybe not. Back to the topic, three months ago someone went ahead and pulled off a high-performance (no sure its scalability) Twitter clone in C. I recalled it's a good discussion on such a topic. Discussion can be found on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/comments/f16mw/ive_never_been_impressed_with_twitter_so_i_made/ http://www.reddit.com/comments/f16mw/ive_never_been_impresse... Its website is at http://blerg.dominionofawesome.com/ http://blerg.dominionofawesome.com/

pavel_lishin 16y ago

Ooh, another "it's just a weekend project!" comment. Next step: convince everyone to use your weekend project, instead of Twitter. Allowing people to import all of their tweets and friends would be helpful, so be sure to implement that. Next next step: Handle all of Twitter's traffic. Consistently, and you not only have to do it better than they did in the beginning, but better than they do it now.

jonursenbach 16y ago
Also create mobile clients for everybody to use. And don't forget about an API.
- cygwin98 16y ago
  I don't think this will be an issue if he manages to maintain the same API as Twitter.
  - ceejayoz 16y ago
    How many Twitter clients support third-party API endpoints?
    - tofumatt 16y ago
      Ironically, I believe Tweetie 2 used to, before Twitter bought it. It allowed a lot of advanced customization.
      - ceejayoz 16y ago
        It actually still does, for now. I wonder if the #dickbar shows up on third-party timelines...
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Here's the thing. If it were anything other than a major endeavor to replace twitter it would have been done by now. It is a big problem and not just from an engineering standpoint. The same for facebook. On the plus side, for competition at least, as hardware technology advances it'll become easier and cheaper to match twitter's capabilities with less effort.

forkandwait 16y ago

Rather than downvoting my rather heavily caveatted remarks, perhaps you could answer the question: Is there a patent encumbrance that makes this more than a technical problem? EDIT: moved "heavily qualified" to something more idiomatic.

djcapelis 16y ago
Since it's sometimes considered nice to explain a downvote, I wanted to mention I downvoted you for spending time telling us how qualified you were instead of just restating your question in a simpler way. I don't know why your other post was downvoted, but probably because people think it's not an interesting question, could be determined by actually going to Google yourself and doing your own homework/search and most people don't feel like patents, if they exist, are the problem with twitter's dominance.
- forkandwait 16y ago
  Well, you don't seem to understand what "qualified" means in the context written -- when I said that my response was qualified it meant that I put caveats around it ("I qualified my response"). Sorry if I was unclear.
  - djcapelis 16y ago
    Ah ha. I understand how it could have been used in that context, just failed to understand that it was. Thanks for clarifying.
- whatusername 16y ago
  Actually -- by saying "very qualified remarks" forkandwait was not talking about his/her education. S/He was instead referring to the fact that by calling the problem of getting market share "(VERY non-trivial)" in the OP - they were well aware of the issue and asking a simple question about twitter's patent protection (or lack thereof).
- wtn 16y ago
  Literacy fail.

defen 16y ago

Instead of doing that, a team of one computer literate person could fork StatusNet, and you could spend the rest of the weekend trying to convince Ashton Kutcher and Charlie Sheen to join your service, and buying hardware to support them.

dreyfiz 16y ago

No. http://www.google.com/patents?q=Twitter&btnG=Search+Patents http://www.google.com/patents?q=Twitter&btnG=Search+Pate... Although they did make Loren Brichter patent "pull to refresh": http://www.google.com/patents?q=Loren+Brichter&btnG=Search+Patents http://www.google.com/patents?q=Loren+Brichter&btnG=Sear... Also, please don’t be "I could clone that in a weekend" guy. Everyone hates that guy. http://blog.bitquabit.com/2009/07/01/one-which-i-call-out-hacker-news/ http://blog.bitquabit.com/2009/07/01/one-which-i-call-out-ha... You could make a piece of crap implementing Twitter’s models and create/read/update/delete in a weekend. Or really, in under an hour with Rails scaffolding. Congratulations, you have now proved that you can guess the schema from using an app. You don’t have a product, or even one tenth of a product. First-past-the-post has nothing to do with Twitter’s success; polish and thought and sweating the details has everything to do with it.

cygwin98 16y ago

I don't know why you got so many down votes. Maybe HN folks got too sick of armchair architects/hackers. Honestly, what your said somehow resonated my inside hacker. I think lots of hackers share similar opinion --- as hardware/network are getting so much cheaper nowadays, it may be very feasible to build and operate "web-scale" apps like Twitter and Reddit with small but capable man powers. Lots of people here agree that the main problem is less of a technical one, but more of a business one --- how to jump start a community in an area especially with a seemingly winning market leader over there. Perhaps, there are still opportunities in the area. Maybe Twitter will be the next Google or maybe not. Back to the topic, three months ago someone went ahead and pulled off a high-performance (no sure its scalability) Twitter clone in C. I recalled it's a good discussion on such a topic. Discussion can be found on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/comments/f16mw/ive_never_been_impressed_with_twitter_so_i_made/ http://www.reddit.com/comments/f16mw/ive_never_been_impresse... Its website is at http://blerg.dominionofawesome.com/ http://blerg.dominionofawesome.com/