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Lol, I built this exact thing as a 120% project at Twitter in 2011. It was called “Flocks”. It even had transient/temporal flocks based on geo check-in and sou

by russ 3y ago

Lol, I built this exact thing as a 120% project at Twitter in 2011. It was called “Flocks”. It even had transient/temporal flocks based on geo check-in and sound-fingerprint flocks for movies, tv shows, and events. We implemented the Shazam audio signature algo from a research paper we found. The thesis was: it’s more natural for people to have conversations when there’s a shared context. It became a widely known project within the company back then, but ultimately, like most things at Twitter, never shipped.

pschuegr 3y ago
That sounds really cool, you were basically (my translation) auto-creating sub-reddits based on the media people were consuming at the time? Sweet project.
- russ 3y ago
  Yeah! Wanted a really fast/frictionless way for people to jump into a context based on signals in their environment. This was also around the time of Color (the photo app which raised 40m or something off just a pitch deck) — “ambient computing” was becoming part of the zeitgeist. Thanks for the kind words! <3
interestica 3y ago
Lol that’s amazing. They could have even now done tongue-in-cheek marketing and straight up call it a “migration”. Also, “nest-ed comments” on different “branches”. You could work backwards and find the bird-related concept and then build the correspond technology? What would “feathers” be?
- russ 3y ago
  Hah! Working backwards would yield some hits for sure. “Feather” (a play off a quill) was my prototype (I built a lot of prototypes there in my “spare” time :)) for a richer, write/tweet only app. You could author long-form content, quickly jump into the camera for recording video or taking a picture (goal: frictionless citizen journalism), and other stuff. I wanted to build a delightful tweeting experience and at the time, it felt like the mobile implementation was just yanked wholesale from Web.
  - prox 3y ago
    Aren’t you in a unique position to make a start-up out of this?
    - DANmode 3y ago
      Based on their legal situation, they may (unfortunately) feel in a unique situation to NOT make a startup out of this.
thakoppno 3y ago
Twitter and a a time shifted and syncd media experience is still such a good idea.
- russ 3y ago
  I agree — I’d love that.
pjc50 3y ago
This is the sort of comment that keeps me coming back to HN - incredible. You were absolutely right that livetweeting TV is one of the great uses of Twitter, and it's a real shame this never got a wider rollout. During the pandemic we started a sort of "virtual mst3k": cue up a film, everyone presses play at a particular time, and tweet along with jokes and the occasional screenshot. We're now up to film #300 and still haven't run out of "bad" movies. An endless source of cinematic surprises. ("bad" is very loosely defined, but if it's a critical success or made a lot of money, that's probably not it. We've seen a lot of Roger Corman, Shawscope, Hammer, Amicus, Cannon Films, Dino de Laurentiis etc) > ultimately, like most things at Twitter, never shipped. This is why the "Twitter will die instantly when 80% of the engineers are sacked" takes were wrong, isn't it? 80% of the engineers were working on products that would never see the light of day, instead.

by russ 3y ago

pschuegr 3y ago

That sounds really cool, you were basically (my translation) auto-creating sub-reddits based on the media people were consuming at the time? Sweet project.

russ 3y ago
Yeah! Wanted a really fast/frictionless way for people to jump into a context based on signals in their environment. This was also around the time of Color (the photo app which raised 40m or something off just a pitch deck) — “ambient computing” was becoming part of the zeitgeist. Thanks for the kind words! <3

interestica 3y ago

Lol that’s amazing. They could have even now done tongue-in-cheek marketing and straight up call it a “migration”. Also, “nest-ed comments” on different “branches”. You could work backwards and find the bird-related concept and then build the correspond technology? What would “feathers” be?

russ 3y ago
Hah! Working backwards would yield some hits for sure. “Feather” (a play off a quill) was my prototype (I built a lot of prototypes there in my “spare” time :)) for a richer, write/tweet only app. You could author long-form content, quickly jump into the camera for recording video or taking a picture (goal: frictionless citizen journalism), and other stuff. I wanted to build a delightful tweeting experience and at the time, it felt like the mobile implementation was just yanked wholesale from Web.
- prox 3y ago
  Aren’t you in a unique position to make a start-up out of this?
  - DANmode 3y ago
    Based on their legal situation, they may (unfortunately) feel in a unique situation to NOT make a startup out of this.

thakoppno 3y ago

Twitter and a a time shifted and syncd media experience is still such a good idea.

russ 3y ago
I agree — I’d love that.

pjc50 3y ago

This is the sort of comment that keeps me coming back to HN - incredible. You were absolutely right that livetweeting TV is one of the great uses of Twitter, and it's a real shame this never got a wider rollout. During the pandemic we started a sort of "virtual mst3k": cue up a film, everyone presses play at a particular time, and tweet along with jokes and the occasional screenshot. We're now up to film #300 and still haven't run out of "bad" movies. An endless source of cinematic surprises. ("bad" is very loosely defined, but if it's a critical success or made a lot of money, that's probably not it. We've seen a lot of Roger Corman, Shawscope, Hammer, Amicus, Cannon Films, Dino de Laurentiis etc) > ultimately, like most things at Twitter, never shipped. This is why the "Twitter will die instantly when 80% of the engineers are sacked" takes were wrong, isn't it? 80% of the engineers were working on products that would never see the light of day, instead.