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Couldn't disagree more...how was it incoherent at all? The comparison to me was this: 1. Visicalc reigned supreme. They got all the press and had all the mar

Couldn't disagree more...how was it incoherent at all? The comparison to me was this: 1. Visicalc reigned supreme. They got all the press and had all the market share for their vertical (like Twitter today) 2. Visicalc got complacent and didn't really innovate (like Twitter today) 3. Someone else did it better and took over the market (he's betting that this will happen to Twitter) I think his "improvements" to Twitter are debatable, but to be fair, he does make the point in the post that the specific improvements aren't what's crucial, just that users are going to demand innovation and Twitter hasn't really done much in that regard.

dkasper 18y ago
It's not like other company's haven't been trying to beat twitter at it's own game already though. Pownce, jaiku, laconica, etc. Twitter's api is really a killer feature that helps things stay fresh with new apps coming out all the time using their platform. That being said, I agree with the main point of the article, innovate or die.
- catch404 18y ago
  I wonder what would happen if the competing apps made an abstraction layer for their APIs to map to Twitters, allowing App developers to develop for both.
  - tvon 18y ago
    The usual thing to do in this situation is or any competition to mirror the API twitter provides, and then to provide features on top of that. Then the developers just have to change a few API configs to use the new service (as opposed to using a new library, or something like that)
mtts 18y ago
I think his main improvement to Twitter is not debatable at all - being able to host your own and determining who can join and who can't - is key for microblogging like this to really take off. Twitter has shown the world that microblogging can be tremendously useful. Most businesses, however, will not use it if everyone can see what their employees are posting. Not to mention that a lot of businesses I know simply feel uncomfortable if they don't in some way own the servers that run stuff that's important to them.
drawkbox 18y ago
The one difference is that twitter is embedded as an API now. Their lack of innovation leads to others innovating ON their platform not the innovators own. I don't disagree. I think there will always be the next innovator/innovation and evolution of ideas but I think this differs and twitter has a strong hold because it is both a mind/marketing share that twitter owns, and a technology share inside of all the apps built on the API. It is the first big web communication platform that used the web friendly REST apis to explode. It was timing as much as simplicity. The complacency though is forcing others to innovate, on their platform, for them and not harming them currently. I think friend feed has a fair shot. But I also think twitter has a certain style, design, culture that is hard to mimic and others aren't there yet.
- tvon 18y ago
  What is so special about the twitter API that it can't be duplicated and extended by another service?
  - buugs 18y ago
    The amount of people creating products around it.
    - tvon 18y ago
      That's kind of at the core of my point. If you "embrace/extend" the Twitter API, you have this entire ecosystem of developers that only have to switch an API key/URL and their tools can work with your system, utilizing whatever new features you provide on top of the "vanilla" Twitter API. The larger the developer ecosystem gets, the more appealing it is to make the switch as easy as possible for them.
  - drawkbox 18y ago
    Nothing. It is so simple it can be copied or recreated in an a few hours. The hard part is getting people to use it and build on it and rely on it as a business. That takes years to unseat. The next twitter will have to beat it on many fronts. I believe most of twitter success was culture to allow the innovation and try (created from work at another startup odeo), timing and someone leading it that had already been through a sale to Google of blogger.com. The odds that that happens everyday isn't high. It was also the time when RESTful APIs were taking hold which Ruby on Rails had embraced, timing was huge.
nostrademons 18y ago
Something curious I've noticed: Twitter is basically a Rorschach test for people. I have a bunch of groups of friends/acquaintances, and each of it sees Twitter's "killer feature" as being different. My mom is a retired teacher. She recently went back to work, to hear her colleagues excited about how they could use Twitter to reach students and parents. My Googler friends are excited about the real-time search aspects of Twitter. My politically-active lawyer friends were all atwitter about the election coverage. My LiveJournal friends all ship their tweets to LJ through LoudTwitter now. It's essentially a form of vanity posting - everybody writes them, but I don't know anyone who reads them. My consultant friends use it for networking and keeping track of folks that they may need information from. My college-student, grad-student, and college-dropout friends use it to procrastinate and waste time. I'm not sure if this is good or bad for Twitter. They've certainly built something useful, perhaps massively useful. But it'll be really hard to capitalize on all these markets at once, and these are definitely separate markets. Perhaps the future of Twitter is in infrastructure, a tool that people can then use and extend as they see fit.
Confusion 18y ago
I don't buy that explanation. In the 1-2-3 example, there isn't much innovation. It's basically a new UI and scripting support. Most people have no use for the latter and the first is a matter of taste. People always look to explain the past in a way that makes sense. However, that leaves no room for contingencies, even though contingency is a powerful force that plays an undeniable role in shaping the future. Machiavelli didn't spend a chapter on the subject because he was such a superstitious guy. If you launch a new product and it has the good fortune to create a positive buzz, then you can take over a market simply by being newer and being liked. You don't need to be better, just different. Without a proper data and a thorough analysis of why people actually preferred 1-2-3 over VisiCalc, this bit of anecdotal evidence is meaningless of the future of Twitter.

dkasper 18y ago

It's not like other company's haven't been trying to beat twitter at it's own game already though. Pownce, jaiku, laconica, etc. Twitter's api is really a killer feature that helps things stay fresh with new apps coming out all the time using their platform. That being said, I agree with the main point of the article, innovate or die.

catch404 18y ago
I wonder what would happen if the competing apps made an abstraction layer for their APIs to map to Twitters, allowing App developers to develop for both.
- tvon 18y ago
  The usual thing to do in this situation is or any competition to mirror the API twitter provides, and then to provide features on top of that. Then the developers just have to change a few API configs to use the new service (as opposed to using a new library, or something like that)

mtts 18y ago

I think his main improvement to Twitter is not debatable at all - being able to host your own and determining who can join and who can't - is key for microblogging like this to really take off. Twitter has shown the world that microblogging can be tremendously useful. Most businesses, however, will not use it if everyone can see what their employees are posting. Not to mention that a lot of businesses I know simply feel uncomfortable if they don't in some way own the servers that run stuff that's important to them.

drawkbox 18y ago

The one difference is that twitter is embedded as an API now. Their lack of innovation leads to others innovating ON their platform not the innovators own. I don't disagree. I think there will always be the next innovator/innovation and evolution of ideas but I think this differs and twitter has a strong hold because it is both a mind/marketing share that twitter owns, and a technology share inside of all the apps built on the API. It is the first big web communication platform that used the web friendly REST apis to explode. It was timing as much as simplicity. The complacency though is forcing others to innovate, on their platform, for them and not harming them currently. I think friend feed has a fair shot. But I also think twitter has a certain style, design, culture that is hard to mimic and others aren't there yet.

tvon 18y ago
What is so special about the twitter API that it can't be duplicated and extended by another service?
- buugs 18y ago
  The amount of people creating products around it.
  - tvon 18y ago
    That's kind of at the core of my point. If you "embrace/extend" the Twitter API, you have this entire ecosystem of developers that only have to switch an API key/URL and their tools can work with your system, utilizing whatever new features you provide on top of the "vanilla" Twitter API. The larger the developer ecosystem gets, the more appealing it is to make the switch as easy as possible for them.
- drawkbox 18y ago
  Nothing. It is so simple it can be copied or recreated in an a few hours. The hard part is getting people to use it and build on it and rely on it as a business. That takes years to unseat. The next twitter will have to beat it on many fronts. I believe most of twitter success was culture to allow the innovation and try (created from work at another startup odeo), timing and someone leading it that had already been through a sale to Google of blogger.com. The odds that that happens everyday isn't high. It was also the time when RESTful APIs were taking hold which Ruby on Rails had embraced, timing was huge.

nostrademons 18y ago

Something curious I've noticed: Twitter is basically a Rorschach test for people. I have a bunch of groups of friends/acquaintances, and each of it sees Twitter's "killer feature" as being different. My mom is a retired teacher. She recently went back to work, to hear her colleagues excited about how they could use Twitter to reach students and parents. My Googler friends are excited about the real-time search aspects of Twitter. My politically-active lawyer friends were all atwitter about the election coverage. My LiveJournal friends all ship their tweets to LJ through LoudTwitter now. It's essentially a form of vanity posting - everybody writes them, but I don't know anyone who reads them. My consultant friends use it for networking and keeping track of folks that they may need information from. My college-student, grad-student, and college-dropout friends use it to procrastinate and waste time. I'm not sure if this is good or bad for Twitter. They've certainly built something useful, perhaps massively useful. But it'll be really hard to capitalize on all these markets at once, and these are definitely separate markets. Perhaps the future of Twitter is in infrastructure, a tool that people can then use and extend as they see fit.

Confusion 18y ago

I don't buy that explanation. In the 1-2-3 example, there isn't much innovation. It's basically a new UI and scripting support. Most people have no use for the latter and the first is a matter of taste. People always look to explain the past in a way that makes sense. However, that leaves no room for contingencies, even though contingency is a powerful force that plays an undeniable role in shaping the future. Machiavelli didn't spend a chapter on the subject because he was such a superstitious guy. If you launch a new product and it has the good fortune to create a positive buzz, then you can take over a market simply by being newer and being liked. You don't need to be better, just different. Without a proper data and a thorough analysis of why people actually preferred 1-2-3 over VisiCalc, this bit of anecdotal evidence is meaningless of the future of Twitter.