
Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed? - shadowsun7
Hi HN,<p>I've never really understood Twitter as a business, and so I figure that since it's been bugging me for a good two years now, I'd might as well give it a shot and ask the good folks here for their thoughts on this. Any insight is appreciated.<p>1) What problem does Twitter solve? Some of the best startups are created around specific solutions to specific problems. Twitter is a non-specific solution to a whole host of problems. It is used differently by different kinds of people. So ... what problem does it <i>really</i> solve? Or is there no specific problem here, and we just have a communal itch that we want to scratch that the Twitter format helps?<p>2) YC tells its applicants: 'make something people want'. But while Twitter does make something people want, it's not clear what that is. Could Twitter be an example of stumbling, by pure accident, into something people want? Does this imply that there is no way to <i>intentionally</i> create a company like Twitter?<p>3) Why is Twitter so successful? Twitter seems to be the only company with no <i>clear</i> value proposition (I'm not saying there's no value - I'm just saying that it's hard to explain what that value is to a non-Twitter user); also it seems to be one of the few startups that can get away with producing a generalized platform as its main product. Wave didn't. Why did Twitter succeed where Wave did not?<p>Thoughts, ideas, and observations are all welcomed.
======
gojomo
From: <http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html>

_Twitter is important because it’s a new protocol. Fundamentally it’s a
messaging protocol where you don’t specify the recipients. It’s really more of
a discovery than an invention; that square was always there in the periodic
table of protocols, but no one had quite hit it squarely._

We could try to draw a small excerpt of this 'periodic table':

    
    
                  LONG    SHORT
      ONE:ONE     email   im/sms
      ONE:PUBLIC  blogs   twitter
    

Of course, the axes aren't exact. You can write arbitrarily short emails and
blogposts, and lengthy IMs. Twitter is usually 'public' but only viewed by
some set of friends/acquaintances/fans, and interactions range from chatty
conversations to long lagged correspondences. Each box bleeds into the others
with crossover communications.

But you get the idea; the signature modes of each big success are variations
on a theme, nailing a new permutation. And it shouldn't be surprising that
blogging pioneers happened upon the adjacent twitter opportunity at the right
time.

You could build similar tables where an axis-of-contrast is
EPHEMERAL/ARCHIVED, or BUSINESS/PLEASURE, or TEXT/AUDIOVISUAL, or
REALTIME/TIME-LAGGED, or SIMPLE/POWERFUL, and see some of the same things
appear in the quadrants, or other familiar services, or gaping holes -- where
there may be Twitter-sized opportunity waiting.

~~~
cmurphycode
You're right about Twitter hitting the missing square in the periodic table. I
think you glaze over the importance of the short nature of Twitter, though.

Yes, you can write arbitrarily short blog posts. But you don't, because you
feel like you have an obligation to make your official blog be a well written,
safe-for-future-eyes snapshot of your personality. Most of us have started a
blog with grand intentions and given up after the effort of crafting essays
carefully became too much.

Twitter requires no more commitment than a minute of your time. The simplicity
of the medium (<http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360/>) is its
greatest strength, and it is also why nobody else was able to make it. It
takes a special sort of daring to provide a product that does so little. I'm
sure users are constantly clamoring for the 140 character limit to be lifted,
for new features to be added, and for more in general. But if Twitter had been
created with no emphasis on short, simple messages, it would've been just like
all the other blog ecosystems.

The impact of the small commitment goes beyond the importance to the average
user. I think that one of the huge factors in Twitter's success was all of the
hype generated by celebrities. What better way for celebrities to connect with
their fans? They can do it in the privacy of their home, it takes nearly zero
effort, they get extra points for being tech-savvy, and they cut out the
middleman of the media. For the star basketball player who think he's
misunderstood (e.g., @TheRealShaq), this is perfect. No more media twisting
his words, just one-on-one conversation. Except it's better than one-on-one,
because the whole world gets to see how you treat your fans.

In short, I think Twitter took off because even though they didn't know it
yet, people yearned for a low effort medium of communication.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
"It takes a special sort of daring to provide a product that does so little."

I'm hanging on to this one. :)

------
rabble
So i worked at Odeo and was involved in the initial product exploration and
creation of Twitter.

It was not created accidentally. We were experimenting with and thinking about
the way people communicate. What if it were casual and open. In the same time
as we did the first prototype of twitter, we also built hellodeo, very similar
to stickem/dailyboot, a kind of social voicemail, a mocked out groupware 2.0,
etc...

We looked a lot at SMS, interviewed teens who used lots of sms, played with
txtmob.org and UPOC as examples of something similar with explicit groups. At
one point i remember, Ev i think, saying "what if we just made a clone of
UPOC, but without explicit groups." Or something to that effect.

We started using it, and with a couple hundred users who liked it, we were
sending hundreds of thousands of tweets a month. Few people used the first
versions, but those who did, became hugely addictive. The half a dozen other
prototypes we built, didn't have passion. Twitter, people loved or hated, or
both.

Evan Williams then took his resources from selling Blogger.com to google pre-
ipo, and was able to buy the VC's out. His original idea was to do Obvious
Corp, continue the prototyping and process which had created twitter.
Unfortunately Twitter overwhelmed Obvious, and they spent the next couple of
years just playing catchup.

It's not hard to do good new product work. Spend time really getting to know a
space, look at practices people are engaging in. Then start thinking about
variations. Are people doing something in their social practices, by using
technology NOT how it was intended. What if you shaped tech for those
intentions.

Twitter's lesson is you can do prototypes until you find something which is
compelling, then keep doing what people want, based on their actions (not what
they say they want.) If you do that, then you'll eventually figure out a
business model.

------
hartard
Back when I used AOL/AIM in high school there was an explosive adoption of
"always on" internet services such as DSL and cable. During this time, it
became fashionable for teens to express their current emotions/actions/likes
as their "Away Messages" on AIM, which was something new compared with the
limitations their previous dial-up connections. I'd go as far to say these
messages were the precursor to services like LiveJournal.

Since college, with the mass adoption of social networks, I would guess that
95% of all my friends no longer use independent chat services, like AIM.

I see twitter as the next iteration of "Away Messages" - or, what they now
call status updates.

Personally, I dislike Twitter for my personal use. I think it is a fascinating
way for brands to sell products to unsuspecting consumers, but there is no
value as a standalone "Away Message" platform... that would be the job of
something like Facebook status updates, since all of my friends are already
connected on there.

As for how it grew? It both filled the need for people to continually express
themselves and that other really important thing... celebrity endorsements.

~~~
cloudkj
+1. That's exactly how I view Twitter - as a modern version of "away
messages." I remember looking forward to the always-on Internet connection in
college dorms as a way to set long-lasting away messages so friends can see
what I'm doing or some witty remark I thought of.

------
tptacek
It's a social and _sociable_ take on the problem RSS was intended to
revolutionize but hasn't really delivered on. Its only ideological conceit, of
140 character messages, actually simplifies the user experience and keeps the
"communities" that form there on the rails. "Chat" is arguably one of the
"stickiest" and most compelling applications of the Internet, and Twitter
delivers a chat-like experience with huge numbers of people that manages to be
both non-ephemeral (IM and IRC conversations disappear forever as soon as they
end) and (therefore) discoverable.

I don't believe for a second that Twitter realized any of this when they
started; like so many good things on the Internet, Twitter's benefits are
emergent, not planned.

Wave is what you get when you try to catalog all the possible benefits of
Twitter and plan a product to deliver those benefits.

------
zmmmmm
I honestly think people often forget the reasons things succeed in the
beginning and replace them with the reasons they are successful now. You know
the main reason I think Twitter was successful? They had an SMS gateway. I
knew loads of people who never sat in front of a computer except for a few
minutes a day at best. It's easy for us constantly-connected internet geeks to
forget how the rest of the world lives. These people were completely isolated
from real-time one-to-many messaging we all take for granted with email, IM, &
RSS. Twitter filled that gap. They got a huge following from people who had no
regular internet access but unlimited SMS.

The other major factors were simplicity (at a functional but also an API
level) and the alignment of self interest with the digerati who in their quest
for self-promotion became instantly addicted to Twitter's public follower
numbers. Thus it became the topic of nearly every tech podcast for a good 12
months straight with sickening regularity.

~~~
sid
Yes i agree with this. And i think should they have come in a little later
they would have missed the boat so in this regard they are lucky. In terms of
how they have maintained and grew twitter to what it is now, that is skill.

If connection to the internet on mobile phones was mainstream at the time
twitter started the SMS gateway would have been redundant just as it is right
now.

I know alot of people who use twitter now and im pretty sure none of them know
you can tweet via an SMS as most of them have twitter apps installed on their
mobiles.

------
qeorge
Solved a real problem: sending text messages to a group.

Later, it allowed people to get semi-personal access to people they admire.

~~~
imownbey
Although this is true, I think it is missing the point. What was the problem
text messages was trying to solve?

A quick, semi-personal connection between two people across a distance. This
can further be boiled down as humans interest in connection and conversation.

It turns out that Twitter, due to the social network (both existing and being
one sided) solves this problem better then text messaging. So really it
evolved text messaging.

This is much like the quote by Henry Ford "If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses." Ford was not "solving a real
problem" -- the problem of transportation had already been solved since the
dawn of time. He was evolving the solution to a faster, more convenient
method.

~~~
messel
As an entrepreneur on the look for the most fertile soil, evolving an existing
solution has the highest potential pay off. Plus the thought of
frankensteining multiple existing technologies together brings a smile to my
face every time.

There's an infinite variety of cool stuff we can build, but what will have the
biggest payoff for my time now, what can I and my team members execute best on
right this moment.

------
protomyth
A lot of people understand SMS. Twitter is SMS on the web.

The other thing I think has made twitter more popular than it normally would
have been is that it has been based in the positive. I can mark stuff as
favorite, and I can follow people. I can't down-vote some tweet into oblivion.
Harassing people is a little harder (you can block a person, but it is not
listed publicly and it only affects your vision). Public categorization was
not in the original design.

Now, we have lists. Most people are using them to make reading easier, but
some are making lists with "less than kind" names and assigning people they
don't like to them. I do wonder if that would have changed things if
introduced earlier.

------
bryanh
I always thought it was a little bit because the founders had quite a bit of
pull in the hacker/startup community. What if Joe Blow had started a better
Twitter a week earlier? How would he have advertised it and got penetration?

I'm not detracting from their success in building a valuable site, but I bet a
lot depended on their connections in getting it adopted.

------
chunkyslink
One thing that no one has mentioned yet.

The API.

Twitter embedded their product and users in hundreds (thousands?) of other
applications. Without this coverage I doubt it would have been so successful.

Edit: I do recognise that there is a chicken / egg situation here. But I still
stick with point.

~~~
endlessvoid94
Absolutely. Their reach would be downright tiny if we couldn't use Echofon on
our iPhone, or tweet blog posts we find interesting with one click, with those
pesky url-shorteners making it possible to share links.

It's the ecosystem, not just the product.

------
rythie
It does solve a real problem.

In order for people to maintain more than a few friends, it's nessasary for
them to know what those friends are doing. If you have More than 100
friends/acquiantances, then talking to them say once a week or once a month is
not time efficient.

Personal blogs and broadcast emails helped solve this problem, but the time
taken to compose posts means that they are often infrequent and irregular.

Twitter (and Facebook) solved this by lowering the barrier to publishing by
allowing it work from mobile and be short with no text formatting. Facebook
was focused on a closed group of friends which left a gap for Twitter to
target people who want publish to a wide number of people which includes very
many people who have their own companies or otherwise see a lot of benefit
from being well known.

I think Twitter executed well with the following:

\- 140 character limit which forces people to be direct as non-professional
writers tend to go on too long.

\- Raising money early and therefore having a big team to build the product.

\- API, this allowed massive innovation to happen outside twitter and to fill
in the long tail of applications for this service in a way that no other site
could match and they would have not been able to do internally.

\- Keeping the product simple to use

\- Publicity

------
cucaracha
"Why did Twitter succeed where Wave did not?"

Well, I can think of a few differences off the top of my head, 1) Twitter had
to succeed, but Wave did not. Google will continue to thrive without Wave (in
it's present form) 2) Unfortunately, Wave was over-hyped way too early. It's
the same problem that the children of well-luminaries and famous artists have.
The expectations on the kids are so high that even when they're "just"
successful, they're considered a failure. 3) Twitter spawned a bunch of
alternative clients early (because it was easy to come up with these
alternatives). The User Experience is not one of Google's strength and it
showed in spades in Wave. The Wave client was a out-the-lab capabilities demo
("dude, I can see every character you type in real-time"); it was not a UI. 4)
The Wave federated backend and its protocol have not failed. It even has
products by SAP and Novell based on it. In fact, I am hoping that now that the
bright lights are off it, the real experimentation can start.

Twitter had time to create a base of early adopters, many of whom were also
"influencers." They became the "value" that the rest of us came to check out
and then strayed.

cheers -- matt perez

------
dpapathanasiou
I think Colbert got to the heart of it, albeit facetiously:

"We exist, we exist, please, let this mean something"

[http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-
videos/26325...](http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-
videos/263253/february-02-2010/the-word---cognoscor-ergo-sum)

~~~
bdr
He got to the heart of something, but it's not specific to Twitter.

------
dotBen
_1) What problem does Twitter solve?_

I've been a big proponent of this methodology - build something people want,
the product will have an inherent value.

However companies like Twitter and Zynga are proving that isn't the _only_
methodology out there.

One could argue that Farmville + co solve the problem of "how do I entertain
myself"/etc, but that's fairly contrived. Social/Casual games don't solve any
problems and are popular mainly because they are addictive (in the same way
roulette doesn't solve a problem but makes casinos a lot of money).

------
petercooper
I started to tweet in 2006 when it was being pitched almost entirely as a "way
to text lots of people" service. I thought that was a stupid idea but saw a
lot of value in leaving lots of small messages over time to a) share what I'm
doing in a "quicker than blogging" way, b) to use as a sort of diary later on
in life, keeping track of where my days were going, and c) to publicly share
tidbits of info too minor to blog about (like my travel arrangements, etc).

It turned out to be a lot more than that, but that's the promise I saw in it
back then. People who like to rant on about never seeing the point of Twitter
aren't "wrong" IMHO but they're clearly not ardent public communicators and
don't see the value in being such.

------
riffic
Twitter.com is not a protocol, it is a service. I think it is also important
to note that it isn't a public utility either.

right now it is dangerous to place all your eggs in a single basket. When you
only have one service provider you lose control of things such as
dependability, namespace, access, etc. These are things that most may be
willing to let someone else provide for them, but some may want to control
these and other aspects of microblogging. A federated design with multiple
independent service providers would go a long way to help fix these
shortcomings.

------
hristov
Everyone wants to be a blogger but most people are too stupid/lazy/without
free time/uncreative to write long blog posts or to read them. In comes
twitter and allows anyone to say stuff to the world with one sentence and
terrible spelling and grammar. And it is not your fault that your spelling and
grammar are terrible, it is practically a platform requirement.

In hind sight it is obvious why it is so popular. But it is one of these
things that only make sense in hindsight. I am sure even the Twitter
executives had no idea where it would lead.

------
aneil
Twitter worked because of psychology and marketing. It is essentially a game
and reputation system in which the users add content to increase their
followership. People use it for other things, of course, but it's this dynamic
which drove famous people to adopt the platform, which then efficiently drove
masses of others to adopt it as well. Twitter harnessed the marketing power of
the world's celebrities by giving them an utterly simple and focused
infrastructure for developing, communicating with, and measuring their public.

Twitter is a game in which score is follower count. All the actions a user can
take to boost this score work to further enhance the value of the platform.
Invite your friends, add useful content, publicize your twitter feed. Twitter
brilliantly incentivizes its users to market the platform as they add to its
value.

Facebook's basic structure is based on an undirected social graph which
mirrors relationships between ordinary people. Twitter developed the
undirected social graph which mirrors hierarchical relationships. This small
change in structure generates the celebrity psychology. This is why CNN
anchors and other media jumped on the platform - it gave them the ability to
develop their audience, in the process they mentioned twitter every 5 minutes
to their audience. It is fame-seeking psychology which creates a virtuous
cycle (from Twitter's perspective, that is) that draws people into the
platform.

Engineers will look at Twitter and think it worked because it offered a
"fundamental new protocol", but that is only a tiny necessary condition for
success. The road is littered with seemingly basic new ideas that never caught
on. Remember when people were saying Google Wave was "fundamental" ... How'd
that work out?

------
AlexMuir
I think one of the biggest reasons for Twitter's success has been the users it
attracts (in chronological order):

1\. Geeks - were not put off by 140char limit, abstract usernames, @-syntax,
and appreciated the openness of the API. Blogs like Techcrunch loved it
because it is an extra distribution channel for their content = Huge media
coverage in the tech media.

2\. Celebrities/Media - It's ideally suited for this - in fact it could have
been launched as a stand-alone product for celebs to communicate with their
audience. Because celebrities were using it = heavy coverage in the mainstream
media.

3\. Social media types - because of the media coverage, and the usage of the
above two groups, social media people began trumpeting that Twitter was/is
something special = business taking an interest.

4\. The rest of the world - I don't think we're at this stage, and I don't
think we will be. It seems to me that most people use twitter to push their
content - they aren't really engaged in a conversation, and following someone
really means nothing. I don't know any 'normal' people who use Twitter. Every
person I know uses Facebook.

------
pkaler
1) Twitter represents the shift from the static web to the dynamic web (Web
2.0) to the real-time web.

2) "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a
faster horse." -- Henry Ford

3) It's a marketing channel for brands and a low friction communication
channel for normals. Wave wasn't built for normals. Google doesn't understand
the existence of normals.

I would suggest reading _The Medium Is The Message_ by Marshal McLuhan.
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_M...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_Massage)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_is_the_Massage>
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_M...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25955.The_Medium_is_the_Massage)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media:_The_Extens...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media:_The_Extensions_of_Man)

------
katmeis
I'm new to Twitter. Like you, I couldn't understand it's purpose, but it was
recommended that I learn how to tweet in order to make myself more current
during a job hunt. Then, I started using Twitter. Wow...the value is it's
flexibility. I can use it in so many different ways. I should note, I don't
tweet personal info or tweet with any friends. My tweets help me create a
professional online persona for my job search, customize and organize (through
lists) valuable online resources (much like a digitial recipe card box),
connect with the ideas of innovators and newsmakers in areas of interest
specific to me. The list goes on and on...The imposed brevity of a tweet is
also a plus for busy professionals trying to share, market or search for
unique ideas. I'm a converted skeptic of Twitter. I look forward to hearing
the thoughts of others on this topic. Regards, "katmeis" on Twitter

------
cookiecaper
Twitter is overrated, first of all. Secondly, I don't think we can say they've
succeeded. They are the new hotness and probably will be for a couple more
years, but they aren't profitable and their only money comes from investors
enamored with the idea. They're just riding the hype train and soon it will be
their stop.

------
sheconsulting
Twitter enables a call to action in real time during crisis. It establishes an
open,and global community, unlike facebook. On twitter you interact with
people who stimulate and share common interests, and, at least, common
motivation to see & learn more than what's in front of them.

Twitter succeeded when Wave did not; one, because it already established
credibility and users already built a follow base they most likely didn't want
to lose. Also, like Coca Cola, McDonalds, FedEx - they were the _first_ , and
established a new standard and brand loyalty.

Even William actually states that twitter began organically; he had no idea it
would grow into what it is now. You can see him present here at a TED
conference: Twitter Founder Evan Williams at TED 09 Video <http://ow.ly/2svVE>
Great presentation!

Hope my 2 cents helped! :) esta

------
waleedka
Twitter (and the Facebook stream) are both a convenient way to casually follow
updates from your friends. To understand the need they fill think of what
would be the alternative if they didn't exist. Email, chat, and RSS don't
really fill that gap.

And yes, this is probably not the kind of thing that you plan. They probably
came across it in the course of trying many different things and then realized
how powerful it was. A lot of inventions happen that way. That's why I think
Google's concept of lettings engineers use 20% of their time to experiment is
brilliant.

Twitter grew big because they had two key components. Something that people
wanted, and a really good growth channel which is when bloggers started
promoting them on their blogs to get more followers. The third component they
need to really succeed is a good business model.

------
silverlake
My opinion on (3): I think you're overlooking the importance of sheer dumb
luck. For entertainment products like Twitter, you have to _somehow_ hook a
core, influential audience. Then it takes marketing talent and more luck to
expand into a mainstream audience. I don't think you can plan it, even with
deep pockets (see Wave, Orkut, Buzz).

I don't use it nor understand the appeal, but I think of Twitter abstractly as
an Internet-scale multicast message queue. You can blast any type of message
out to a set of subscribers very quickly. That is a very interesting
technology with potential value. It just happens to be used primarily as a
chat application today. For example, you could trivially implement rssCloud on
top of it.

------
ecaron
1) Everyone wanted to blog, nobody took the time to read everyone's blogs, few
invested the time to write blogs.

2) Absolutely. I would argue that most gigantic successes come out of having
an inkling of what people want vs. being the outcome of a gigantic time R&D
investment.

3) Simplicity - and this is the same reason that Wave didn't. If people are
able to go from "I have no idea what this is" to "I know how to use this" in a
weekend, as Leo Laporte often talks about, it won't die on the vine. You can
go from rookie to I'm able to use this (note: this is different than "I get
why I want to use this") on Twitter in under an hour - and enabling people's
ADD is the best way to traction.

------
knorby
Twitter creates one of the best interfaces possible for a person to filter
through messages. 140 characters is a big part of that, but I think profile
pictures play a pretty serious role in that too. I can go through a massive
number of tweets in a pretty short time. I see quickly who tweeted it, and I
see any interesting keywords. This problem comes up in so many different
areas, and it is a non-solution that works so well. The take away should be
that the best way to filter a firehose of data for human consumption is to
have a source indicator that is very quick for a person to parse, and a
limited set of keywords.

------
caseycrites
The reason Twitter succeeded is because of the simplicity of the idea and
design. It's simplicity allows it to be whatever the user needs it to be.

It can replace your RSS feed aggregator, your bookmarks, your facebook, your
contacts on your cell-phone, etc., etc.

Features get added over time, but they're much more opt-in then opt-out.
Meaning, you actively have to seek them out and use them; they're not forced
on you. This means that the base product is still the _same_ as it has always
been; they're not, as 37 Signals would put it, dying with their user base.

In summary, Twitter serves many purposes and it does it in a fashion that it
doesn't get in your way.

------
yanilkr
A Lot of people feel a need to say something and many feel a need to be heard.
Twitter was a good solution, because it limited how much one can say. I doubt
it was planned, But it seemed to have satisfied some psychological needs.

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
Some services lower the bars to entry- Twitter also lowered the ceiling.

------
grep
Jack Dorsey: The 3 Keys to Twitter's Success
[http://the99percent.com/videos/6528/jack-dorsey-
the-3-keys-t...](http://the99percent.com/videos/6528/jack-dorsey-the-3-keys-
to-twitters-success)

------
mikecane
You must be new to the online world. Twitter is not new. It just brought what
existed before to the Internet itself easily:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cb_simulator>

The CompuServe marketers _hated_ that service. They saw no reason for
CompuServe to have it or to promote it. Meanwhile, back then, the online world
was based on per-hour connect time charges and there were people who had bills
of over a _thousand dollars a month_ just from using _that_ part of
CompuServe.

~~~
tptacek
I had a CompuServe account but never spent much time on CB. I have been on
chats, from Renegade BBS's on to IRC on to IM, for 20+ years. Twitter is not
simply chat; it admits to persistant and semantically meaningful applications
layered on top of it.

It's like a weird cross between NNTP and IRC, as I see it.

~~~
mikecane
Yes, but the core aspect is the same, no matter the incarnation or revision:
People like chatting with other people. The marketers couldn't quite
understand that.

------
tomwalker
Can I ask another question:

Is twitter profitable yet? Has it a roadmap to profitability?

~~~
azeemazhar2
Twitter has 170 employees. Assuming fully loaded cost of 150 k that is
approximate $ 30 mill pee annum

The google and bing deals are worth 50mill leaving 20mill to cover other costs
like iron and bandwidth. My sense is clearly profitable. A

~~~
iampims
According to their "Team list" on Twitter they have 241 employees
(<http://twitter.com/twitter/team>)

------
verhine
Twitter was in a position to succeed because they had the right timing. But
twitter ultimately succeeded because of the cute factor of their name. It was
fun to say and to coin variations of its predicate into other verbs. The
segment of our population that doesn't understand twitter, by default, tend to
make fun of it's narcissistic uselessness — and twitter was a name that
already poked fun at itself; it didn't seem to take itself too seriously.
Because of that, it was able to build a loyalty.

------
kunley
Because, sadly, people have egos. Everyone wants to be famous and reach
thousands of others, even when what he's spreading is completely irrelevant.
Twitter enables this for everyone.

------
extension
People need nutrients, shelter, and a few creature comforts. Everything else
in life is a frill. If all we did was solve problems, there would be no
culture and no civilization.

The most important inventions are the ones that nobody "needs": rain dances,
the bible, symphonies, television, the Internet. All those little problems
that need solving are the gaps created by these frontiers. There are
straightforward opportunities in those gaps, but don't expect to find the most
successful ideas there.

------
yurylifshits
Twitter solves many problems.

If you want just one, than "celebrity-fan communication" / "brand-consumer
communication" is a good example. Twitter is really the leading solution in
that area.

------
eltiare
I think one reason it succeeded is that it fills a gap that was missing before
in the online world: a simple way to communicate what was important to you no
matter how trivial it is to everyone else. It also makes it easy to check what
is going on without slogging through tons of pages.

I also think it was the extensible nature of Twitter. I wrote an article that
highlights this: <http://accentuate.me/blog/?p=46>

------
cosmic_rays
Twitter succeeded because of the words people use on twitter the focus is like
a laser when it comes to particulars. People choose to stay part of twitter
and not just pull away from it what strikes them as meaningful as well. It
shows that we all share a sense a communal culture that is not so selfish as
to use the information and leave but it draws us to share how it affects us
openly and efficiently.

------
billnapier
wait. It's still not clear to me that Twitter has succeeded as a business. Are
they making money? It's not clear to me yet that they are.

~~~
swombat
[http://mashable.com/2009/12/21/twitter-is-already-
profitable...](http://mashable.com/2009/12/21/twitter-is-already-profitable/)

 _According to Bloomberg, the microblogging service will make a small profit
this year off of $25 million in revenue, thanks to the search deals it
completed with Google and Microsoft, which were reportedly worth $15 and $10
million, respectively. Those deals pay Twitter for access to tweets that are
in turn included in real-time search results on each property._

------
emehrkay
I always felt that it was pushed and pushed by tech blogs as the next big
thing, until it did become the next big thing. I opened an account in 07, I
believe, and never really used it, but heard over and over again how important
it was from sites like techcrunch. That and the fact that they allowed anyone
to build on top of it

------
merrymorse
1\. Twitter is RSS for the rest of us. To subscribe, you just click. No
worries about which feedreader to use, no need for multiple feedreaders, no
copy/paste of URLs.

2\. Twitter is completely opt in.

3\. Twitter got its timing right: People have very short attention spans and
want immediate gratification. We have become a world of scanners (not
readers).

------
rapidfireaim
Three things, which is the same thing, behind twitters success: Constant
Updates of your so called "friends", our preoccupation with - what other
people are saying, and getting news that relate to us - who is following me
now? did anybody re-tweet my tweet etc.....

------
mvalente
Early adoption was due to it being an extension to the IM Away messages. After
that, especially after users started to use @x as a form of addressing, it
basically became IRC 2.0, without the problems of installing IRC clients,
having netsplits, being kicked, etc, etc.

\-- MV

~~~
InclinedPlane
And most especially of having to keep connected all the time. Twitter is
somewhat similar to web based IRC "in the cloud" but it also fills an
important niche that IRC doesn't. IRC is an N to N broadcast medium with a
finite number of channels. Twitter is an N to M broadcast medium with an
effectively limitless number of channels.

------
sayrer
Twitter legitimized and monetized spam.

Since you allegedly don't see messages from accounts you don't follow, spam is
more socially acceptable.

In the extreme case, it's a platform for spam bots to subscribe to messages
from other bots. We humans are just a small slice of the traffic. :)

------
paul9290
Not every start up follows the solve a problem idea. Many that don't are the
biggest and most popular on the net. Twiiter, Facebook are good examples.

What they provide are platforms that allow us to communicate and connect in
unique, fun and more efficient ways.

------
samratjp
I'll answer the business question - it's simple - Twitter makes money from the
Twitter fire hose APIs and whitelisting privileges.

And these days, it seems twitter will purely survive from random #Bieber
trends (yes, the tweens have found twitter it seems).

------
staunch
1) Good startup with a big idea 2) Anointed by The Tech Elite

Either one wouldn't have been enough.

------
chanux
I started twitter only because of the commands it offered..

follow @nick / leave @nick / dm @nick hi etc.

But the ability it provides in sharing things quickly and shortly & reading
stuff shared by like minded people actually got me stuck in.

------
Chirag
I think Twitter succeeded because it gave user only one action. All user has
to do is type some text and press enter. Users essentially didn't have to
think or even work to get comfortable with the system.

------
astrofinch
Computer games and marijuana also have a lot of the characteristics you
mention.

Patterns of success and failure are a little different for businesses that
provide value through entertainment.

------
samuelefabbro
Basically Twitter is a new hype. Print a t-shirt with a message e go around
the world. Someone will read, someone dont. Who cares? You'll feel good
anyway. @samuelefabbro

------
sidwyn
Spamming Facebook updates just wasn't right, so Twitter came up with a new
protocol to do just that..

------
jacoblyles
Because I can @famousPerson and sometimes they will RT me or @meBack.

More philosophically, it is a low-commitment communication protocol.
Everything is expected to be a quick, throwaway 140 char response. So
celebrities are willing to read your tweets and tweet you back, but they might
not be willing to email you or take your phone call.

------
bhc3
"What's new about twitter is that you don't specify the recipients. That is a
real difference, and the right thing for some kinds of messages currently sent
by email." - comment by pg

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515992>

------
staghioff
I only read this interesting discussion because I clicked a link from Twitter.

Enough said.

------
ozwerk
Because magic like TwitterArt #140Art happens, day in, day out.

------
nerfhammer
[http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2008/03/...](http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2008/03/simplicity.png)

------
ozwerk
Because of #140ART #TWITTERART of course.

