3 ms·

> 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 t

by 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.

by jwhite 17y ago

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.