5 ms·
Odeo Releases Twttr [2006]
- bensummers 17y agoShades of "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." But would anyone really have predicted the success of Twitter in July 2006?
- enjo 17y agoTo be fair: Twitter today is a rather different product as well. Gone is the emphasis on SMS, and instead it's a micro-whatever social thingie.
- bumblebird 17y agoAlso, the "success of twitter" still really has to yet be proven. They get data through their free backend message queue, but can that be converted to cash?
- ctb9 17y agoNo, twitter is already successful; its growth and reach are spectacular and it could be sold for quite a tidy sum. Was google not a success before adwords, when all it had done was revolutionize the way we sort content on the internet?
- bumblebird 17y agoSure. In that measure of success, it's wildly successful. But it's not a sure thing they'll be able to monetize it well. Surely the value should be measured based on how valuable it is to each user * number of users. I'm not convinced that's as high as people think. Their retention rates aren't great at all. But if the measure of success is 'can we hype and sell', then definitely twitter are already wildly successful and I'm sure they'll all do fine out of it. (Then whoever buys will probably completely kill it and the cycle will repeat).
- jiggity 17y agovery true, but it's the fact that the founders let it evolve, surviving past the bitter cynicism I think is the lesson here.
- raghus 17y agoThe comments on the TC article are really worth reading
- thinkzig 17y agoI imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website. Heh.
- petercooper 17y agoSlashdot's "Apple Releases iPod" news from 2001 is similarly funny looking back: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257 http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257 No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoHa, very cool! I was reading through and found my comment from then. "Looks interesting. Any word on how it might tie into Odeo? The privacy options are key. I’d never want any of my text messages public… especially the drunken ones. Nick over at valleywag, might have a new gossip and scoop source. Overall though, cool site, with lots of room to grow if it can fix a few things."
- petenixey 17y agoAttaboy Sumon, good comment
- ojbyrne 17y ago"and a few select insiders were playing with the service at the Valleyschwag party in San Francisco last night." I enjoyed that, because I was at that party. Though not one of the "select insiders." However I'm tempted to think "a few select insiders" is actually Mike Arrington weasel words for "me."
- byrneseyeview 17y agoAre you really accusing Arrington of downplaying his importance in the tech world?
- ojbyrne 17y agoI thought I was accusing him of narcissism. Namely that "influential insiders" is synonymous with his friends, or to reduce it to it's basics, himself.
- qeorge 17y agoCan you imagine a web service launching publicly today without making sure Mike Arrington had a working account? Good find, thanks for submitting.
- ubernostrum 17y agoI launch web services publicly on a regular basis, and don't really care whether anyone at TechCrunch has an account.
- jmathai 17y agoAmen. I read TC but the idea that you need to get TC'ed is emotionally flawed.
- qeorge 17y agoOh please. Obviously I mean companies that give 2 shits about PR and are trying to hit home runs, not weekend projects. Techcrunch is the most popular tech blog. If you don't care about it, you don't care about PR. Replace TC with Mashable, Engadget, Gizmodo, or whatever you like better, the point remains.
- jmathai 17y agoMissed my point. While TC gets on my nerves at times I like the site and they break news pretty well. I subscribe to their RSS - I'm not anti-TC. My comment was trying to state that people can get too caught up in their own world. For me, that's TC/Mashable/ect. Building a successful business (which I admittedly haven't done yet) does not require being featured on TC (or other) blog. Does it help? Of course. But it's got a finite value which you have to make sure you don't overestimate.
- qeorge 17y agoFair enough. I agree with you, I just thought the comments were a little nitpicky and came across as knee-jerk. Thanks for clearing it up.
- alabut 17y agoI loved Twitter and signed up super early (summer 06) because it helped me keep in touch with my wife while she finished nursing school in San Diego and I was working my first SF job. Reading the original review reminds me of how much I liked the original SMS-and-web-only focus. It leaves room for recent apps that focus on Twitter's original core mission of group texting, like Tatango: http://tatango.com/ http://tatango.com/
- mtrichardson 17y agoAgreed. (there's also http://www.ccsync.com/ http://www.ccsync.com/ )
- treyp 17y ago(and 3jam, http://www.3jam.com/group-phone-number.php http://www.3jam.com/group-phone-number.php , although they've moved into the google voice space recently)
- jbc25 17y agoI'm seriously confused about the name. Is it really pronounced "twitter"?? Is that not borderline trademark infringement?
- marknutter 17y agoThis is classic. One thing I've learned from glimpses back at history like this is that the more off-the-cuff negative comments there are about a new idea, typically, the better. Simplicity is often met with disdain, mainly because people hold the belief that anything that becomes hugely successful must be insanely complicated. It pains us to see something so seemingly easy to come up with become such a hit. I feel this way with a lot of successful startups today; a combination of jealousy and flippant denial. With Twitter, however, I remember being excited about it and joining really early on. I was mainly excited to hear what my friends were up to or thinking at any given moment since we've all spread out across the globe, but it wasn't until it became super popular that my less technical friends started joining and it became valuable. Now I love it.
- bdittmer 17y agoMan, it sure was nice when TC was about reviewing startups.