5 ms·

But what he's trying to say is that when Twitter goes down, it takes everyone with it. When a blog goes down it only takes it's RSS feed down with it, not every

But what he's trying to say is that when Twitter goes down, it takes everyone with it. When a blog goes down it only takes it's RSS feed down with it, not every RSS feed in existence.

Periodic 17y ago
The whole point is that a single failure will not bring down the whole system. As it is right now, regularly no one will have twitter access. With a decentralized system you might lose specific people, or even a whole region or maybe even communication between regions, but never the whole system.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  Part of the whole point of Twitter is that either your posts are seen by all of your followers, or (in the increasingly rare cases when Twitter is down) by none of them. If you want a decentralized system where some of your recipients will get the message, but others won't, shouldn't you just send email?
  - pyre 17y ago
    Decentralized doesn't mean client-side. Think about it this way: What if Twitter wasn't a centralized company, but a standard protocol for software running on servers to communicate with each other? Each user would run their own 'microblog' on a server somewhere. When someone 'followed' them, they would end up subscribing to an RSS/Atom but in a way that was more similar to rssCloud or PubSubHubBub (i.e. the user1 wants to follow user2 so user1's software registers a 'callback url' with user2's microblog; now when user2 publishes, an update is pushed out to user1's microblog software) Users wouldn't even necessarily have to fool around with 'hosting packages.' This opens up a market for companies to provide 'targeted hosting' (hosting of a particular software package) or to create their own software package that conforms to the basic tenets of the protocol while adding things onto the interface (like games/advertisements/quizzes/etc). So the 'average user' wouldn't necessarily have to get their hands 'dirty' trying to figure out the difference between Shared Hosting and a VPS. You can have servers in a decentralized setup. The whole point is that there isn't a single point of failure (in this case Twitter or Facebook). Not only that, people could (presumably) have better access/ownership of their own data and be able to back it up in case of disaster (in which case they could restore everything back to normal or migrate to a different server/service).
    - jwhite 17y ago
      > Decentralized doesn't mean client-side. I think that's a good point. Is there any reason why Twitter couldn't be decentralized in a way that's transparent to the users? The article seems to go off on a bit of a daydream about open, decentralized protocols, implying that the system would be somehow more "democratic" that way, but that's beyond the original problem of reliability and robustness to failure. I'm thinking of something that looks more like content distribution.
      - SapphireSun 17y ago
        Isn't Twitter's thing partly that it allows for SMS messages? How would a distributed network deal with that? I was under the impression that you needed some sort of financial structure and deals with telecos to do that. I guess you could run the same software, but then anyone who wants to microblog would have to pay for all the SMS charges.
        pyre 17y ago
        How many people are using Twitter SMS messages? I assume that at this point most people that are heavily using Twitter on a phone are using it through a Blackberry/Pre/iPhone and using the 2G/3G internet.
        pyre 17y ago
        Depending on how the system was decentralized, you could have a variety of companies all providing microblogging that inter-communicated with each other through a known protocol (allowing anyone to create their own software package to provide the same). This would allow the individual companies to provide the SMS Gateway while single people on their own hosting plans could op to just not use SMS (or go with a cell-network provider that provided their own email-to-SMS gateway). Not only that, if it was popular enough to have a microblog on this platform, but very few (microblog) providers offered SMS functionality, it would be an opening for someone to startup their own service to offer the functionality for free/cheap to users that wanted to add it to their existing microblog.
mechanical_fish 17y ago
when Twitter goes down, it takes everyone with it. At which point everyone switches to Facebook, or email, or Blogspot, or direct SMS, or HN at the same time so that they can discuss the Twitter outage with their friends. We're not designing TCP/IP. We're not building the 911 emergency system. Your social network does not have to survive a nuclear attack. There are many alternative channels at Twitter's layer of the network. Meanwhile, there is an all-important flip side: When Twitter is up, it is generally up for everyone. (To the point where, when this isn't true, people start writing essays complaining about the unreliability of Twitter. As if a network of a thousand thousand individually-managed RSS feeds would be any more reliable.)

But what he's trying to say is that when Twitter goes down, it takes everyone with it. When a blog goes down it only takes it's RSS feed down with it, not every RSS feed in existence.

Periodic 17y ago

The whole point is that a single failure will not bring down the whole system. As it is right now, regularly no one will have twitter access. With a decentralized system you might lose specific people, or even a whole region or maybe even communication between regions, but never the whole system.

mechanical_fish 17y ago
Part of the whole point of Twitter is that either your posts are seen by all of your followers, or (in the increasingly rare cases when Twitter is down) by none of them. If you want a decentralized system where some of your recipients will get the message, but others won't, shouldn't you just send email?
- pyre 17y ago
  Decentralized doesn't mean client-side. Think about it this way: What if Twitter wasn't a centralized company, but a standard protocol for software running on servers to communicate with each other? Each user would run their own 'microblog' on a server somewhere. When someone 'followed' them, they would end up subscribing to an RSS/Atom but in a way that was more similar to rssCloud or PubSubHubBub (i.e. the user1 wants to follow user2 so user1's software registers a 'callback url' with user2's microblog; now when user2 publishes, an update is pushed out to user1's microblog software) Users wouldn't even necessarily have to fool around with 'hosting packages.' This opens up a market for companies to provide 'targeted hosting' (hosting of a particular software package) or to create their own software package that conforms to the basic tenets of the protocol while adding things onto the interface (like games/advertisements/quizzes/etc). So the 'average user' wouldn't necessarily have to get their hands 'dirty' trying to figure out the difference between Shared Hosting and a VPS. You can have servers in a decentralized setup. The whole point is that there isn't a single point of failure (in this case Twitter or Facebook). Not only that, people could (presumably) have better access/ownership of their own data and be able to back it up in case of disaster (in which case they could restore everything back to normal or migrate to a different server/service).
  - jwhite 17y ago
    > Decentralized doesn't mean client-side. I think that's a good point. Is there any reason why Twitter couldn't be decentralized in a way that's transparent to the users? The article seems to go off on a bit of a daydream about open, decentralized protocols, implying that the system would be somehow more "democratic" that way, but that's beyond the original problem of reliability and robustness to failure. I'm thinking of something that looks more like content distribution.
    - SapphireSun 17y ago
      Isn't Twitter's thing partly that it allows for SMS messages? How would a distributed network deal with that? I was under the impression that you needed some sort of financial structure and deals with telecos to do that. I guess you could run the same software, but then anyone who wants to microblog would have to pay for all the SMS charges.
      - pyre 17y ago
        How many people are using Twitter SMS messages? I assume that at this point most people that are heavily using Twitter on a phone are using it through a Blackberry/Pre/iPhone and using the 2G/3G internet.
      - pyre 17y ago
        Depending on how the system was decentralized, you could have a variety of companies all providing microblogging that inter-communicated with each other through a known protocol (allowing anyone to create their own software package to provide the same). This would allow the individual companies to provide the SMS Gateway while single people on their own hosting plans could op to just not use SMS (or go with a cell-network provider that provided their own email-to-SMS gateway). Not only that, if it was popular enough to have a microblog on this platform, but very few (microblog) providers offered SMS functionality, it would be an opening for someone to startup their own service to offer the functionality for free/cheap to users that wanted to add it to their existing microblog.

mechanical_fish 17y ago

when Twitter goes down, it takes everyone with it. At which point everyone switches to Facebook, or email, or Blogspot, or direct SMS, or HN at the same time so that they can discuss the Twitter outage with their friends. We're not designing TCP/IP. We're not building the 911 emergency system. Your social network does not have to survive a nuclear attack. There are many alternative channels at Twitter's layer of the network. Meanwhile, there is an all-important flip side: When Twitter is up, it is generally up for everyone. (To the point where, when this isn't true, people start writing essays complaining about the unreliability of Twitter. As if a network of a thousand thousand individually-managed RSS feeds would be any more reliable.)