5 ms·

Twitter is not public infrastructure

55 points by pclark 18y ago

thinkzig 18y ago
I couldn't agree with this more. It goes back to the "should Twitter be taking usernames from people?" discussion we had here a week or so ago. Twitter is free. You're not paying for it. It doesn't owe you anything. Plan accordingly. On the flip side, this begs the question "When is Twitter going to start charging to use the API?" It seems clear that there is some demand for it.
- iamdave 18y ago
  If Twitter begins to charge for API access and reports even the slightest success in doing so, expect the rest of the social web to follow suit in the fashion of the economic bailouts.
  - njharman 18y ago
    Is anyone making money with Twitter API? Are they still in this recession? The chance they will have success charging for their api is low. They might still report success since it's in their interests to do so.
    - iamdave 18y ago
      Twitterific is making money from it.
- rw 18y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question It is a logical fallacy to beg the question.
  - GavinB 18y ago
    Step 1: Define question begging. Step 2: Show that the statement does not use your definition of question begging. Hoisted by your own circular logic, question-begging petard!
  - sayrer 18y ago
    Given the section on colloquial usage, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Contemporary_usage_and_variations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Contempora... I'd say that's rather prescriptive, maybe even SNOOTy. http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html
    - Eliezer 18y ago
      That's what I said the first time I got zapped for that, but the one said, "'Begs the question' is a technical term with a precise meaning and we need to preserve that precise meaning," and at that point I gave in.
      - sayrer 18y ago
        Yeah, I agree that it's still at the point where people will look down on you for using it in the colloquial manner.
  - silentbicycle 18y ago
    "Once the classic meaning of a phrase begins losing ground to a less useful but more apparent one, it's time to tell it goodbye." - "beg the question", Roy Blount Jr., _Alphabet Juice_
    - pj 18y ago
      sounds like the term "cloud computing"
- vlad 18y ago
  I think you meant, "this begets the question."
chadmalik 18y ago
Is there any reason why the whole publish+subscribe Blogs / RSS complex hasn't settled on a reasonably easy to implement standard similar to SMTP that allows organizations to run their own microblog server? Its really disgusting to think of twitter (or any single vendor) "owning" this kind of function and preventing simple things like allowing text indexing.
- jonasvp 18y ago
  I believe laconi.ca (http://laconi.ca/trac/ http://laconi.ca/trac/) provides exactly this kind of functionality. As always, though, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Look at Jabber and how little it has taken away from the proprietary IM protocols. As long as everybody and their mother is on Skype/Twitter/etc. there's not a big incentive to switch.
  - chadmalik 18y ago
    Yes but there needs to be a protocol not just a competing server. It seems like the older internet protocol standards like SMTP work better. At least some of this generation of protocols seems to have played out in horrible ways like the IM market where one or at most 4 vendors have walled gardens and an open standard doesn't win. I guess in the early 70s when SMTP was designed there weren't a bunch of big corporations looking to "monetize" every new feature, just some bearded coding gurus in academia who wanted to build something that worked.
    - gsmaverick 18y ago
      There is a protocal. The Open Microblogging Specification. It allows different servers to interact!
    - gsmaverick 18y ago
      There is a protocol. The Open Microblogging Specification. It allows different servers to interact!
- m_eiman 18y ago
  I'm wondering the same thing. One of my spare time projects is to design such a protocol (and if for some unforeseen reason I should happen to finish it I'll post it here for all of you to tear to pieces). Another thing I don't get is when "everyone" claims that Jabber is a Twitter replacement, they're not in the same ballpark feature-wise :P
okeumeni 18y ago
Here is an idea for twitter to make money: User pays a small fee for bandwidth and space the more space (and bandwidth; they will have to figure this out) you need the more you must pay. One more thing (It is an idea derived for my actual stealth app), you get your own space somewhere to store your tweets. Then they will have to store some sort of repository there for you. Bandwidth and size become your business; you deal with the third party. This way Twitter will somehow become more open for hackers to do stuff on their platform.
sh1mmer 18y ago
Unless you have a business relationship with whoever you rely upon then you are in trouble. Even then you should be ready to jump ship. Remember when S3 and EC2 went down? If all of those services that rely on it were ready to jump onto another service they wouldn't have gone down as well. While it's not always possible to replace parts of your infrastructure you rely on, it's common sense to have multiple redundancies for stuff. The problem in the case of Twitter is their offering is users, rather than computing. That's something you can't replace if they pull the plug.
boredguy8 18y ago
Yeah, because services built on top of another 3rd party product are never successful... This makes no sense at all. True, your business will fail if the underlying service fails, but Microsoft would fail if all hard drive production suddenly stopped, too. A great many businesses rely on "private 3rd parties". The real concern is "how reliable are they?"
- m_eiman 18y ago
  At least they're not reliant on Hitachi et al paying the electricity bills to keep the drives spinning... I'd say that's a rather significant difference.
- raganwald 18y ago
  > Microsoft would fail if all hard drive production suddenly stopped The likelihood of "all" hard drive (or PC manufacturing) ceasing is a very different proposition than the likelihood of a single, unprofitable company taking an action that puts you out of business. Most business rely on private 3rd parties, but there is a reason that companies work hard to have multiple sources of supply for critical goods and services.
- ja2ke 18y ago
  There are extremes and extremes. I mean, should nobody develop software for the Mac or iPhone platforms? Maybe... but unlike Twitter, Apple is a fairly large and decently stable company which has been around for a while. Then you could look beyond that and say that developing for an Apple platform is still more of a gamble than developing for Windows, but the risk, even decently long-term, of developing for MacOS X, is fairly minimal. Twitter, on the other hand, is a free online service which is only a few years old, and isn't making money. I think where you draw the line in terms of how much risk you're willing to assume due to reliance on other businesses is up to you, but being pedantic doesn't really help.
mdasen 18y ago
This is something that's been in my head a little while: would there be interest in Wikipedia-style, not-for-profit, in the public interest services? We don't see a lot of this in web stuff - probably because internet has seen a lot of competition and a lot of free stuff. However, maybe there is still demand.
- rw 18y ago
  Yes - but contemplate trying to get VC for that. Volunteers only, I suspect.
  - smhinsey 18y ago
    i can't come up with much in the way of existing not for profit infrastructure institutions. do these exist in some form i can't think of? the closest i can come up with is a rural electrical co-op but i'm not sure that's quite the same thing.
paul7986 18y ago
Great to see them announce OAuth support - though I'd prefer a Gmail labs/iPhone app store approach applied to Twitter (Twitter labs). I really want to customize my Twitter account and if they had Twitter labs I could customize my account accordingly; add features found in these apps directly into my Twitter account. Though instead of Twitter developing new features take iPhone app store approach and approve/integrate developers programs into Twitter. They could then sell each feature and share revenue with developers!
est 18y ago
twitter is like the Internet's syslog to me. ^_^

55 points by pclark 18y ago

I couldn't agree with this more. It goes back to the "should Twitter be taking usernames from people?" discussion we had here a week or so ago. Twitter is free. You're not paying for it. It doesn't owe you anything. Plan accordingly. On the flip side, this begs the question "When is Twitter going to start charging to use the API?" It seems clear that there is some demand for it.

iamdave 18y ago
If Twitter begins to charge for API access and reports even the slightest success in doing so, expect the rest of the social web to follow suit in the fashion of the economic bailouts.
- njharman 18y ago
  Is anyone making money with Twitter API? Are they still in this recession? The chance they will have success charging for their api is low. They might still report success since it's in their interests to do so.
  - iamdave 18y ago
    Twitterific is making money from it.
rw 18y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question It is a logical fallacy to beg the question.
- GavinB 18y ago
  Step 1: Define question begging. Step 2: Show that the statement does not use your definition of question begging. Hoisted by your own circular logic, question-begging petard!
- sayrer 18y ago
  Given the section on colloquial usage, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Contemporary_usage_and_variations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Contempora... I'd say that's rather prescriptive, maybe even SNOOTy. http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html
  - Eliezer 18y ago
    That's what I said the first time I got zapped for that, but the one said, "'Begs the question' is a technical term with a precise meaning and we need to preserve that precise meaning," and at that point I gave in.
    - sayrer 18y ago
      Yeah, I agree that it's still at the point where people will look down on you for using it in the colloquial manner.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  "Once the classic meaning of a phrase begins losing ground to a less useful but more apparent one, it's time to tell it goodbye." - "beg the question", Roy Blount Jr., _Alphabet Juice_
  - pj 18y ago
    sounds like the term "cloud computing"
vlad 18y ago
I think you meant, "this begets the question."

chadmalik 18y ago

Is there any reason why the whole publish+subscribe Blogs / RSS complex hasn't settled on a reasonably easy to implement standard similar to SMTP that allows organizations to run their own microblog server? Its really disgusting to think of twitter (or any single vendor) "owning" this kind of function and preventing simple things like allowing text indexing.

jonasvp 18y ago
I believe laconi.ca (http://laconi.ca/trac/ http://laconi.ca/trac/) provides exactly this kind of functionality. As always, though, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Look at Jabber and how little it has taken away from the proprietary IM protocols. As long as everybody and their mother is on Skype/Twitter/etc. there's not a big incentive to switch.
- chadmalik 18y ago
  Yes but there needs to be a protocol not just a competing server. It seems like the older internet protocol standards like SMTP work better. At least some of this generation of protocols seems to have played out in horrible ways like the IM market where one or at most 4 vendors have walled gardens and an open standard doesn't win. I guess in the early 70s when SMTP was designed there weren't a bunch of big corporations looking to "monetize" every new feature, just some bearded coding gurus in academia who wanted to build something that worked.
  - gsmaverick 18y ago
    There is a protocal. The Open Microblogging Specification. It allows different servers to interact!
  - gsmaverick 18y ago
    There is a protocol. The Open Microblogging Specification. It allows different servers to interact!
m_eiman 18y ago
I'm wondering the same thing. One of my spare time projects is to design such a protocol (and if for some unforeseen reason I should happen to finish it I'll post it here for all of you to tear to pieces). Another thing I don't get is when "everyone" claims that Jabber is a Twitter replacement, they're not in the same ballpark feature-wise :P

okeumeni 18y ago

Here is an idea for twitter to make money: User pays a small fee for bandwidth and space the more space (and bandwidth; they will have to figure this out) you need the more you must pay. One more thing (It is an idea derived for my actual stealth app), you get your own space somewhere to store your tweets. Then they will have to store some sort of repository there for you. Bandwidth and size become your business; you deal with the third party. This way Twitter will somehow become more open for hackers to do stuff on their platform.

sh1mmer 18y ago

Unless you have a business relationship with whoever you rely upon then you are in trouble. Even then you should be ready to jump ship. Remember when S3 and EC2 went down? If all of those services that rely on it were ready to jump onto another service they wouldn't have gone down as well. While it's not always possible to replace parts of your infrastructure you rely on, it's common sense to have multiple redundancies for stuff. The problem in the case of Twitter is their offering is users, rather than computing. That's something you can't replace if they pull the plug.

boredguy8 18y ago

Yeah, because services built on top of another 3rd party product are never successful... This makes no sense at all. True, your business will fail if the underlying service fails, but Microsoft would fail if all hard drive production suddenly stopped, too. A great many businesses rely on "private 3rd parties". The real concern is "how reliable are they?"

m_eiman 18y ago
At least they're not reliant on Hitachi et al paying the electricity bills to keep the drives spinning... I'd say that's a rather significant difference.
raganwald 18y ago
> Microsoft would fail if all hard drive production suddenly stopped The likelihood of "all" hard drive (or PC manufacturing) ceasing is a very different proposition than the likelihood of a single, unprofitable company taking an action that puts you out of business. Most business rely on private 3rd parties, but there is a reason that companies work hard to have multiple sources of supply for critical goods and services.
ja2ke 18y ago
There are extremes and extremes. I mean, should nobody develop software for the Mac or iPhone platforms? Maybe... but unlike Twitter, Apple is a fairly large and decently stable company which has been around for a while. Then you could look beyond that and say that developing for an Apple platform is still more of a gamble than developing for Windows, but the risk, even decently long-term, of developing for MacOS X, is fairly minimal. Twitter, on the other hand, is a free online service which is only a few years old, and isn't making money. I think where you draw the line in terms of how much risk you're willing to assume due to reliance on other businesses is up to you, but being pedantic doesn't really help.

mdasen 18y ago

This is something that's been in my head a little while: would there be interest in Wikipedia-style, not-for-profit, in the public interest services? We don't see a lot of this in web stuff - probably because internet has seen a lot of competition and a lot of free stuff. However, maybe there is still demand.

rw 18y ago
Yes - but contemplate trying to get VC for that. Volunteers only, I suspect.
- smhinsey 18y ago
  i can't come up with much in the way of existing not for profit infrastructure institutions. do these exist in some form i can't think of? the closest i can come up with is a rural electrical co-op but i'm not sure that's quite the same thing.

paul7986 18y ago

Great to see them announce OAuth support - though I'd prefer a Gmail labs/iPhone app store approach applied to Twitter (Twitter labs). I really want to customize my Twitter account and if they had Twitter labs I could customize my account accordingly; add features found in these apps directly into my Twitter account. Though instead of Twitter developing new features take iPhone app store approach and approve/integrate developers programs into Twitter. They could then sell each feature and share revenue with developers!

est 18y ago

twitter is like the Internet's syslog to me. ^_^