

 The Next Killer App is to Twitter as 1-2-3 was to Visicalc - coglethorpe
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/04/24/theNextKillerAppIsToTwitte.html

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codeslinger
I know Winer's a great figure in the history of the Web, but this might be the
most incoherent post I've seen this year. It made no sense to me, in that the
history lesson has nothing to do with the problem at hand, if indeed it is a
problem at all. Winer needs to realize that his problems with Twitter are not
the same as Twitter's problems on the road to success, as much as he'd like
them to be.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Couldn't disagree more...how was it incoherent at all? The comparison to me
was this:

1\. Visicalc reigned supreme. They got all the press and had all the market
share for their vertical (like Twitter today)

2\. Visicalc got complacent and didn't really innovate (like Twitter today)

3\. Someone else did it better and took over the market (he's betting that
this will happen to Twitter)

I think his "improvements" to Twitter are debatable, but to be fair, he does
make the point in the post that the specific improvements aren't what's
crucial, just that users are going to demand innovation and Twitter hasn't
really done much in that regard.

~~~
dkasper
It's not like other company's haven't been trying to beat twitter at it's own
game already though. Pownce, jaiku, laconica, etc. Twitter's api is really a
killer feature that helps things stay fresh with new apps coming out all the
time using their platform.

That being said, I agree with the main point of the article, innovate or die.

~~~
catch404
I wonder what would happen if the competing apps made an abstraction layer for
their APIs to map to Twitters, allowing App developers to develop for both.

~~~
tvon
The usual thing to do in this situation is or any competition to mirror the
API twitter provides, and then to provide features on top of that. Then the
developers just have to change a few API configs to use the new service (as
opposed to using a new library, or something like that)

------
smoody
"Easy hooks into Disqus (and competitors) so each tweet can be the beginning
of a conversation."

In my humble opinion, I can't imagine a worse addition to Twitter. Well, I can
imagine a few, but the beauty of Twitter is its simplicity and the fact that
there's a single way of doing things.

If each 140 tweet can become the topic of a threaded discussion, then suddenly
I have to start checking comments for each tweet and getting closure would be
an order of magnitude much harder.

------
siculars
In summation: all of this has happened before and will happen again.

Winer is pointing out the cycle of birth, stagnation and rebirth from his
perspective. In regards to twitter in specific, I believe that it will take
quite a lot to dethrone the reigning king. Any new service will have to be
compatible, incorporate and be a superset of twitter providing more
functionality than the original without altering the simplicity.

------
axod
It's really funny watching people use twitter.

At the TechCrunch Geek'n'rola they setup a 'back channel', with the #gknr
hashtag on twitter. Some guy sat there hitting reload on a browser while we
watched new tweets come in with that hashtag.

I know this is the "hip" thing to do, but seriously. This is poor mans
webchat. Just use IRC for the love of god.

Using twitter to emulate channels by using a hashtag is just ridiculous.

~~~
swombat
Well, if you want to compare Twitter and IRC, then you could consider Twitter
to be a really neat user interface (both graphical and logical) that allows
people to be in a bunch of giant, ad-hoc, asynchronous, high-idling, low-
frequency IRC rooms.

In other words, it's a different thing. Just because there are similarities
doesn't mean it's the same.

~~~
moe
_then you could consider Twitter to be a really neat user interface (both
graphical and logical)_

I think the word you were looking for is "clumsy". Sorry, but polling for
replies (manually or through a custom client) doesn't appear "neat" in any
way.

------
extension
Twitter (with a little help from Facebook) is bringing blogging to the
mainstream by making it brain dead simple (blog writing, that is, not simply
reading).

As tragically irrational as it may be, it is undeniable that the secret of
Twitter's success has something to do with its dearth of functionality
compared to the _myriad_ blogging and chat platforms that came _long_ before
it. As such, there is no reason to think that adding a ton of features will
make a Twitter killer.

However, once people get the hang of it, they may gradually start to demand
more. Since Twitter is likely to be paralyzed by feature-phobia, there would
be a tremendous opportunity for someone to ride the learning curve and provide
what people want, just when they are ready for it.

On the other hand, this is a market destined for commodification, especially
with an API. The more Twitter becomes a defacto standard, the more the
collective will of the internet will try to wrest control away from the
company and like gravity, this is a force that always wins in the end.

