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We tried that. It didn't stick. You have to remember that in the early days Twitter and a log of competition. Jaiku, Pownce, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, etc.. The
by themagician 11y ago
We tried that. It didn't stick.
You have to remember that in the early days Twitter and a log of competition. Jaiku, Pownce, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, etc.. Then you had the open source versions: Laconi.ca, Status.net, Friendi.ca, GNU Social, Twister, etc..
Say what you will about Twitter, but it's the only thing that ever got traction or had any sticking power.
- marssaxman 11y agoSure, I observe that it has succeeded. I'm just not willing to invest any time or attention in it, since I've learned my lesson with proprietary communication platforms!
- brador 11y agoHow did Twitter get traction and sticking power where the others failed? What was it doing differently?
- eclipxe 11y agoCelebrities, media, "normals".
- pkamb 11y ago"tweet" became a verb and noun.
- Torgo 11y agoI think it's because they iterated really fast on new features, and presumably stayed with what was popular. Original Twitter isn't even all that close to what Twitter is today. gnusocial is playing catchup featurewise, moves much slower, and frankly the default theme is really ugly.
- brador 11y agoHow did they know what was popular? Which features did they iterate on?
- Torgo 11y agoI assume they can see what uptake there is for features using analytics, but what comes to mind are native retweets and subtweets. Those are relatively new. They have also changed how blocking works multiple times based on feedback.
- lmm 11y agoNews people started paying attention early because Twitter was faster than anything else - I think due to the 140-character limit and, believe it or not, dumbphone support. When e.g. an earthquake happened, Twitter was where you'd see it first. Once the news folks were paying attention some of them started reporting tweets directly and then it snowballed - there's a real positive feedback loop between news/politicians/celebrities - politicians and celebrities use twitter because the newspapers pay attention, and the newspapers pay attention because politicians and celebrities use it.