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Funny, I dislike twitter but nobody else seems to share my reasons. My main reason is that it's a closed centralized service. I suppose somebody will say "it'
by zmimon 17y ago
Funny, I dislike twitter but nobody else seems to share my reasons.
My main reason is that it's a closed centralized service. I suppose somebody will say "it's not closed, it has an open API" and that misses the point: it's closed in the sense that you or I can't start a Twitter service and integrate it on equal terms with the original Twitter. Email / SMTP provided us a successful model and XMPP followed later to show how to do it for real-time messaging. It would have been easy to build Twitter on top of these standards, or to extend them in open ways if necessary. Instead Twitter is a giant step backwards into a time when technology and services were controlled by single vendors. We grew out of that and I thought we would never go back. I'm horrified that the tech digerati are all enthusiastically embracing a headlong rush back into it. I can't understand why nobody seems to care - it's like the enthusiastic embrace of the Iraq war by the media - there's hardly a critical voice to be heard, and yet I can see it will only be a short space of time before people are all realizing the cage they have built for themselves and asking what everyone was thinking.
- al3x 17y agoActually, we at Twitter are thinking quite a bit about exactly this.
- aaronz3 17y agoI was brainstorming a bit about this the other day as well, but I don't have the time/resources to do anything with it. Why can't we have a digital identity that isn't attached to a particular service? If I want to change cell providers I can take my phone number with me, but if I want to switch ISPs/Email providers I have to get a new email address. It would be useful (and in the interest of competition) to provide a way to contact your identity, and you can configure your identity to dispatch messages to whatever service you happen to use at that given time (somewhat ala Google Voice maybe?)
- Andys 17y agoTwitter, when you get down to it, is like IRC where everyone has their own channel. When you "follow" a friend, you are joining their channel. IRC is decentralised and is an open, free protocol. I would prefer to keep using IRC but I have started using twitter for the same reason I had to install MSN messenger - to keep in contact with friends who can't or won't use IRC.