
Twilio Acquires Electric Imp - dsalzman
https://www.twilio.com/blog/electric-imp-is-now-part-of-twilio
======
mellosouls
Completely OT but these announcements for acquisitions, new releases etc:

Why are they always _excited_?

 _We are really excited that Electric Imp is now part of the Twilio family._

:

 _Now that Twilio and Electric Imp have joined forces, we’re more excited than
ever to see what you build._

I get professional pride; it just always seems a bit overdone and insincere
when it's phrased like that - though I'm sure in some cases (and no doubt this
one) the participants really do feel excited.

~~~
vadym909
Its an American cultural norm- which often seems 'fake' or 'posing' to
Europeans, S.Americans or Asians who are little more reserved and stingy
expressing such levels of sentiment.

It was a shock to me when I started interviewing for jobs- and an American
friend told me, its very important in the US, when interviewing to say "I'm
really excited (more than you really are) about the opportunity to work at
XYZ." The truth could be you hate the company or are ambivalent- but if you
don't say you are absolutely excited- the assumption is you are not interested
and therefore will be passed over for someone who is 'truly excited'.

~~~
ashton314
I lived in Germany for two years and spent a lot of that time talking to
natives, as well as students and refugees from around the world. When I
returned home to my native America, I was put off by how over-the-top positive
people were.

I get it that when you say “how are you” in America, people are usually _not_
asking how you are actually doing. I think I surprised a few people by telling
them about all the things that were going wrong that day.

Does anyone else get wrong-footed by these little niceties too?

~~~
stevenjohns
Not really. Pleasantries are common all over the world.

If you've ever spent time in Latin America then you'd know it's rude _not_ to
ask _anyone_ how they are before engaging in any sort of conversation. The
Middle East (i.e East Asia) has very similar mannerisms.

Engaging in these pleasantries signals _I view you as a person_ rather than
_you are just a means to an end._

It's the literal equivalent of foreplay before sex.

~~~
WJW
It's not the performing of pleasantries, but the level at which Americans
perform them vs the norm in most of western Europe.

The average level of American "OMG so excited to meet you" is usually reserved
for actual celebrities in Europe. When you have seen them talk like that to
_everyone in the room_ , the conclusion for the European is that the American
is lying about being excited to meet you, which is much more offensive than if
they just said "pleased to meet you".

~~~
dragonwriter
> The average level of American "OMG so excited to meet you" is usually
> reserved for actual celebrities in Europe

I've been an American all my life, and I've never seen anyone say they were
excited to meet someone other than either an actual celebrity or someone who
has been significantly talked up in advance to the level of being at a quasi-
celebrity level in context (and even in the latter case, “I'm glad to finally
meet you”, possibly followed by an explanation of the reason they've been
looking forward to it, is much more common than expressions of excitement.)

Honestly, the behavior you seem to be describing is one which would strike
most Americans as both unusual and deeply disingenuous.

~~~
bittercynic
Things are very different from one part of USA to another, and even from one
social group to another. Though I haven't participated in any social situation
where "OMG so excited..." is the norm, it is easy to imaging it exists.

~~~
secondaryditto
my experience (as us-born/bred) is that this exists, but is more a personality
trait than anything else. And some personality traits can co-exist among
others with the same trait more easily, and that 'so excited' outward
expression can often get amplified in a group, but even individuals can be
like that. I don't see it as uniquely American, but... it may be somewhat
here. By comparison, traveling in Russia, public displays of
enthusiasm/positivity/emotion were far less common at all (although in small
groups of friends they came out).

------
dynamite-ready
Congratulations to Electric Imp.

I can recall a senior engineer giving a talk at an Erlang meetup years ago
(5+), where he described the tech. An interesting combination of Erlang
servers and embedded Squirrel VM clients, iirc. The talk stayed in my mind
long afterwards. Really explained the tech choices well, and I admired both
the pragmatism and the innovation.

I learnt a lot from that talk, and have been rooting for them ever since.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqXntCtVH68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqXntCtVH68)

As for the actual product, I don't yet have many (if any) IoT devices in my
home. And if I did, I wouldn't be buying them based on Twilio or Electric
Imp's name. But I can see there being a land grab for IoT tech supply and
infrastructure, which Electric Imp clearly has a high value approach to.

So this is a 'random' acquisition that makes a lot of sense to me. Could
develop into something quite big actually.

------
mattbee
Oh that was Hugo Fiennes' company! He wrote the definitive BBS software for
Acorns, then designed the Empeg Linux MP3 player for cars (in like 99), and
the iPhone 1 hardware.

 _applause_

~~~
fiveguys94
Aww thanks!

There may be argument about the BBS software being "definitive", but it was
certainly used to run some of the most popular Acorn BBSes - there were
installs with 16 dial-in modems in Hong Kong, for example. It has also been
decades since I wrote a terminal emulator... simpler times!

As with most things the empeg was a team effort as were all the iPhones I
worked on at Apple (the first one through to the 4S) and the Nest... lots of
amazing engineers doing incredible work, and I consider myself very lucky to
have been able to work with them. Ditto for Electric Imp, which was a fresh
look at the problem of exchanging data between the cloud and the real world.

I grew up in rural Somerset in the UK and never imagined I'd get to work at
Apple and be wrangling power budgets with Wendell Sander. Almost everything in
life revolves around being at the right place at the right time and being
willing to take risks.

------
karmicthreat
I guess I didn't realize Electric Imp was something people were still using
for products. Does make sense for Twilio's API and service lineup though.

~~~
duskwuff
Same here. I remember hearing about their SD-form-factor product, like, 5 or
10 years ago. Then cheap wireless microcontrollers like the ESP8266 came onto
the market and made them irrelevant.

~~~
squarefoot
They had that SD to WiFi card which was interesting to have say a non
connected camera send directly photos to a server through an access point. An
ESP8266 or ESP32 might probably accomplish the same by implementing SD card
emulation on some of its GPIOs. But the form factor would be much less
convenient.

~~~
duskwuff
Are you sure that was an Electric Imp product? I'm pretty sure those were from
other companies, like Eye-Fi (and later others).

~~~
squarefoot
You're right, thanks for pointing out. They made a SD looking MCU board with
WiFi, but that didn't work as SD emulator they just used the connector because
it was cheap and ubiquitous.

[https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/electric-imp-
breakout-h...](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/electric-imp-breakout-
hookup-guide)

------
rasz
Electric Imp - fits the 'someone elses computer' definition pretty well.
Products build around their stack become useless locked up garbage after
manufacturers stops paying bills(bankruptcy etc)
[https://hackaday.com/2019/10/08/teardown-quirky-egg-
minder/#...](https://hackaday.com/2019/10/08/teardown-quirky-egg-
minder/#comment-6185512) TLDR: doorstop

