3 ms·

(I'm the author of the post) I totally get where you are coming from. Of course protocols don't move fast. And sometimes we as implementors have to deal with p

(I'm the author of the post) I totally get where you are coming from. Of course protocols don't move fast. And sometimes we as implementors have to deal with people whose sole goal in life is upholding the sanctity of a protocol to the detriment of it's users. The real point that I was trying to get across is that when you build your house on somebody else's API you have no guarantee. With a protocol, that company can go away and others will fill it's place. In designing an open social network, buddycloud (the company) should be able to go bust, have our servers fail, be raided by the police... whatever. buddycloud (the open social network) and anyone who uses the protocol for their servers or clients can just keep on doing social-network-things.

zaidf 16y ago
Most API-related problems are business related, not technical. Twitter could decide to use a protocol but that does little to prevent it from pulling or limiting access via the protocol when it wants and as it wants.
- shantanubala 16y ago
  I think a good example is this: Google Talk may use the Jabber protocol, but most users don't care or know. The protocol itself isn't what matters -- Google's market proliferation matters more than the protocol. Similarly, even if Twitter or another company used open protocols, the alternatives would have to provide a better service on top of the open protocol to actually convert people or make the protocol a useful component of the service itself.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
shantanubala 16y ago
Let me put it this way: after the massive MySpace exodus a while back, it was clear that people don't mind switching services as long as a large portion of their friends switch as well. I admire what you guys are doing a lot, but I'd love to see some way for buddycloud to evolve over time without causing version conflicts in the different clients and servers who may be running different versions. I guess my main point is that a single point of failure is also a single point of success since there are much fewer moving parts.
neilk 16y ago
What a preposterous notion! You mean I can send messages to another person on the internet that doesn't use the same service as me? Without requiring billions in ad revenue to pay for one central hub that monitors and controls it all? Seriously, give me an example of ONE company that's made money off such a crazy scheme. It sounds communist or something. Now if you'll excuse me I'm running out of CompuServe minutes.

zaidf 16y ago

Most API-related problems are business related, not technical. Twitter could decide to use a protocol but that does little to prevent it from pulling or limiting access via the protocol when it wants and as it wants.

shantanubala 16y ago
I think a good example is this: Google Talk may use the Jabber protocol, but most users don't care or know. The protocol itself isn't what matters -- Google's market proliferation matters more than the protocol. Similarly, even if Twitter or another company used open protocols, the alternatives would have to provide a better service on top of the open protocol to actually convert people or make the protocol a useful component of the service itself.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

shantanubala 16y ago

Let me put it this way: after the massive MySpace exodus a while back, it was clear that people don't mind switching services as long as a large portion of their friends switch as well. I admire what you guys are doing a lot, but I'd love to see some way for buddycloud to evolve over time without causing version conflicts in the different clients and servers who may be running different versions. I guess my main point is that a single point of failure is also a single point of success since there are much fewer moving parts.

neilk 16y ago

What a preposterous notion! You mean I can send messages to another person on the internet that doesn't use the same service as me? Without requiring billions in ad revenue to pay for one central hub that monitors and controls it all? Seriously, give me an example of ONE company that's made money off such a crazy scheme. It sounds communist or something. Now if you'll excuse me I'm running out of CompuServe minutes.