

Odeo Releases Twttr [2006] - wave
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/#comments

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jasonlbaptiste
Ha, 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."

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thinkzig
_I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr
messages published on a public website._

Heh.

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petercooper
Slashdot's "Apple Releases iPod" news from 2001 is similarly funny looking
back: <http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257>

_No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame._

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bensummers
Shades of "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." But would anyone
really have predicted the success of Twitter in July 2006?

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enjo
To 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.

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bumblebird
Also, 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?

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ctb9
No, 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?

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bumblebird
Sure. 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).

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ojbyrne
"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."

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byrneseyeview
Are you really accusing Arrington of downplaying his importance in the tech
world?

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ojbyrne
I 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.

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alabut
I 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/>

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mtrichardson
Agreed.

(there's also <http://www.ccsync.com/> )

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treyp
(and 3jam, <http://www.3jam.com/group-phone-number.php> , although they've
moved into the google voice space recently)

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marknutter
This 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.

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raghus
The comments on the TC article are really worth reading

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rms
Yeah, it was before TC comments jumped the shark. I don't know why they don't
use a much more aggressive moderation policy; the toxic comments rub off on
the rest of the site.

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petenixey
Attaboy Sumon, good comment

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qeorge
Can you imagine a web service launching publicly today without making sure
Mike Arrington had a working account?

Good find, thanks for submitting.

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ubernostrum
I launch web services publicly on a regular basis, and don't really care
whether anyone at TechCrunch has an account.

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jmathai
Amen. I read TC but the idea that you need to get TC'ed is emotionally flawed.

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qeorge
Oh 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.

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jmathai
Missed 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.

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qeorge
Fair 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.

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bdittmer
Man, it sure was nice when TC was about reviewing startups.

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jbc25
I'm seriously confused about the name. Is it really pronounced "twitter"?? Is
that not borderline trademark infringement?

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petenixey
Check the date.

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jbc25
Damn those post dates are barely noticeable sometimes.

