3 ms·

> "Imagine if I had to store the 50k+ tweets I've made on Twitter on my device, and upload ALL of them to a new server whenever a community server went down."

by pavlov 4y ago

> "Imagine if I had to store the 50k+ tweets I've made on Twitter on my device, and upload ALL of them to a new server whenever a community server went down." This... doesn't seem too bad at all? Let's assume an average of 150 bytes of text per tweet, and an additional 50 bytes of actually important metadata. That's only 10 megabytes for the entire archive of 50,000 items. A single HDR photo from a modern smartphone is larger. IMO this was the original point of Twitter: the extreme limitation on post size (140 characters) made it feasible to build applications that work with large amounts of content. There was a time around 2010 when building a Twitter API client was the standard demo for a new UI framework — the data model was simple enough that a basic client was the next step up from "Hello world" complexity. This was actually a nice vision for a social network! Lots of simple near-realtime data, a jungle of interesting clients to make sense of it. I wish someone was building a Twitter competitor with this kind of minimalist approach.

mmiyer 4y ago
What about images in tweets?
- colordrops 4y ago
  Still likely within the capacity of most modern phones.
- pavlov 4y ago
  In this hypothetical minimalist Twitter clone in the 2009 spirit, images are elsewhere. We have a widely used hypertext protocol that lets you reference media objects from anywhere, so let’s use that. Client apps can individually solve the image upload usability question in ways that fit their user base. Yes, there will be broken links. But IMO that’s better than having all your data in one centralized location where it can eventually be taken over by private equity looking to make a buck, or a billionaire who wants to be a media mogul. Edit: Looking back at historical Twitter news, it’s clear that in 2010 their vision was still to have images embedded from other sites. Here’s a relevant TechCrunch article: https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-twitter-tips/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-twitter-tips/ Note how they added display support for embedded Flickr photo set links. Your pictures could be on the dedicated photo service and you’d still get the nice set browsing UI inside Twitter. They should have stuck with this and built a protocol that lets sites interoperate on things like “here’s a set of photos to be embedded” (so you could use something else than Flickr). But instead they wanted to chase the wannabe-Facebook dream of sucking everything into their servers and using a closed client to sell inline ads.
  - philipwhiuk 4y ago
    Deep linking Flickr's content without showing Flickr's adverts gets you blacklisted so quick.
    - pavlov 4y ago
      2010 was a more optimistic time. The integration described in that old TechCrunch post was clearly designed together with Flickr.
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      Also YouTube. That was before Twitter betrayed (?) third-party developers around 2013 : https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/9/3135406/twitter-api-open-closed-facebook-walled-garden https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/9/3135406/twitter-api-open-c... For instance it was basically the end of Flattr 1.0 : https://venturebeat.com/social/flattr-the-crowdfunding-payment-service-gets-cut-off-by-twitter/ https://venturebeat.com/social/flattr-the-crowdfunding-payme...
- FinnKuhn 4y ago
  Most users probably have the pictures they uploaded to Twitter still stored on their phone without having a capacity issue due to them.
  - sbarre 4y ago
    When did you join Twitter? I joined in 2008 and have gone through... 7 phones in that time. I definitely don't have all those photos or images.
    - FinnKuhn 4y ago
      I just transfer old photos to my new phones so this doesn't really change anything for me. Considering that I have posted different devices though (PC, Laptop, phone) and only copied some images or deleted them after posting though you are probably still correct that I don't have all of them stored on my phone. The storage on your phone would probably still be enough for nearly everyone and for the rest doing the account moving process on a PC or through cloud storage would probably be ok.
- yardie 4y ago
  Sites such as Imgur and Giphy were created to solve this problem. A lot of users simply don't know or don't recall just how barebones the original Twitter app was.
  - sbarre 4y ago
    And today both of those sites are purging historical user uploads, which is completely their right, but definitely doesn't "solve the problem" of keeping control over your social media history/legacy/output. One thing I do like about the decentralized model is the ability to modularize this. I would love a Bluesky/ATProto/whatever client that allowed me to specify some compatible image service where images I post get seamlessly uploaded and linked. Then I can choose what I use, maybe it's something I pay for and have better guarantees around durability and availability. Or maybe it's a free or ad-supported service where my image gets deleted after 6 months and I don't care that's fine with me. Giving users more choices is good, IMO.
yardie 4y ago
> There was a time around 2010 when building a Twitter API client was the standard demo for a new UI framework — the data model was simple enough that a basic client was the next step up from "Hello world" complexity. It's fascinating the Twitter we have today and the Twitter from that era are even considered the same app. I wrote a simple Twitter client in Cocoa and Python and even NodeJS. It was such a simple way to get a working, functional, usable demo going that you could immediately show to friends. Then they realized it's impossible to make money advertising this way and shut it down.

by pavlov 4y ago

mmiyer 4y ago

What about images in tweets?

colordrops 4y ago
Still likely within the capacity of most modern phones.
pavlov 4y ago
In this hypothetical minimalist Twitter clone in the 2009 spirit, images are elsewhere. We have a widely used hypertext protocol that lets you reference media objects from anywhere, so let’s use that. Client apps can individually solve the image upload usability question in ways that fit their user base. Yes, there will be broken links. But IMO that’s better than having all your data in one centralized location where it can eventually be taken over by private equity looking to make a buck, or a billionaire who wants to be a media mogul. Edit: Looking back at historical Twitter news, it’s clear that in 2010 their vision was still to have images embedded from other sites. Here’s a relevant TechCrunch article: https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-twitter-tips/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-twitter-tips/ Note how they added display support for embedded Flickr photo set links. Your pictures could be on the dedicated photo service and you’d still get the nice set browsing UI inside Twitter. They should have stuck with this and built a protocol that lets sites interoperate on things like “here’s a set of photos to be embedded” (so you could use something else than Flickr). But instead they wanted to chase the wannabe-Facebook dream of sucking everything into their servers and using a closed client to sell inline ads.
- philipwhiuk 4y ago
  Deep linking Flickr's content without showing Flickr's adverts gets you blacklisted so quick.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    2010 was a more optimistic time. The integration described in that old TechCrunch post was clearly designed together with Flickr.
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Also YouTube. That was before Twitter betrayed (?) third-party developers around 2013 : https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/9/3135406/twitter-api-open-closed-facebook-walled-garden https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/9/3135406/twitter-api-open-c... For instance it was basically the end of Flattr 1.0 : https://venturebeat.com/social/flattr-the-crowdfunding-payment-service-gets-cut-off-by-twitter/ https://venturebeat.com/social/flattr-the-crowdfunding-payme...
FinnKuhn 4y ago
Most users probably have the pictures they uploaded to Twitter still stored on their phone without having a capacity issue due to them.
- sbarre 4y ago
  When did you join Twitter? I joined in 2008 and have gone through... 7 phones in that time. I definitely don't have all those photos or images.
  - FinnKuhn 4y ago
    I just transfer old photos to my new phones so this doesn't really change anything for me. Considering that I have posted different devices though (PC, Laptop, phone) and only copied some images or deleted them after posting though you are probably still correct that I don't have all of them stored on my phone. The storage on your phone would probably still be enough for nearly everyone and for the rest doing the account moving process on a PC or through cloud storage would probably be ok.
yardie 4y ago
Sites such as Imgur and Giphy were created to solve this problem. A lot of users simply don't know or don't recall just how barebones the original Twitter app was.
- sbarre 4y ago
  And today both of those sites are purging historical user uploads, which is completely their right, but definitely doesn't "solve the problem" of keeping control over your social media history/legacy/output. One thing I do like about the decentralized model is the ability to modularize this. I would love a Bluesky/ATProto/whatever client that allowed me to specify some compatible image service where images I post get seamlessly uploaded and linked. Then I can choose what I use, maybe it's something I pay for and have better guarantees around durability and availability. Or maybe it's a free or ad-supported service where my image gets deleted after 6 months and I don't care that's fine with me. Giving users more choices is good, IMO.

yardie 4y ago

> There was a time around 2010 when building a Twitter API client was the standard demo for a new UI framework — the data model was simple enough that a basic client was the next step up from "Hello world" complexity. It's fascinating the Twitter we have today and the Twitter from that era are even considered the same app. I wrote a simple Twitter client in Cocoa and Python and even NodeJS. It was such a simple way to get a working, functional, usable demo going that you could immediately show to friends. Then they realized it's impossible to make money advertising this way and shut it down.