

The Internet of Tweets - r0h1n
https://medium.com/message/the-internet-of-tweets-581cb63ece80

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misuba
I think I'm like most of us in that I had completely forgotten about
annotations. They sound cool.

But I suspect that many of us also don't much _want_ Twitter to get better
anymore. We'd rather see an alternative get good enough to switch to.

~~~
signaler
That's why I switched to app.net

It is very clear that app.net was a response to Twitter being so closed off

~~~
untog
And it is very clear that app.net did not succeed in attracting a large
audience.

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munificent

        > We were at Twitter’s first developer conference,
        > an event called Chirp. And indeed, Will.I.Am’s
        > armchair interview was just one of a few clear
        > indications that Twitter really wasn’t just for
        > geeks anymore. Instead, Twitter had suddenly
        > blossomed into a company that aspired to be a
        > player in media and entertainment and
        > advertising, with its eye focused on becoming
        > the giant, publicly-traded company it is today.
        > Twitter began to take its first tentative steps
        > away from its geeky roots, which set the stage
        > for a nerd backlash that still hasn’t fully abated.
    

Wait, what? Am I the only one who remembers that Twitter launched at _SXSW_?
They have _never_ had geeky roots. They were always a technology product
targeting media and entertainment folks.

A big part of Twitter's initial appeal was that it was the only social network
that had honest-to-God celebrities on it. I remember when being able "follow"
some famous actor still carried a frisson of excitement, like you just ran
into them in a restaurant.

~~~
dasil003
SXSW is not geeky? I don't see what world you live in that you can so self-
assuredly attempt to split this particular hair with double emphasis. Are you
trying to draw a line between hipsters and geeks? Or tech before tech was
cool? Native vs web? I'm not following.

Anyway, Twitter didn't launch at SXSW, they already had significant traction
almost purely among a certain subset of web developers. Remember, they were
spun out of Odeo (the market leader in podcast aggregation before iTunes
silently added podcasts to iTunes and killed them overnight). This was one of
the first Ruby on Rails companies way back in 2006 (maybe they even started in
2005). The entire thing that made people excited about Twitter was the fact
that they were API first, and you could build any kind of client on it. It was
really the first company that set the standard for web APIs, and the hype and
anticipation around the possibilities were palpable at that time. In fact this
early developer traction is what put Twitter on the map and got them the
traction that they became interested enough that celebrities started joining.
The celebrity thing was the second wave, which never would have been possible
without the developers and early-adopter geeks to prove the platform.
Remember, they "launched" at SXSW in 2007, but I challenge you to find a
single celebrity with a join date before 2009.

~~~
anildash
It's also probably relevant that Twitter didn't launch at SXSW. This was me
writing about the company and service a month before that SXSW, and I was
hardly first: [https://blog.twitter.com/2007/anil-dash-
twitter](https://blog.twitter.com/2007/anil-dash-twitter)

~~~
dasil003
That's my opening sentence :)

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mansilladev
Oren Michels (co-founder of Mashery) blogged about Twitter as a platform ripe
for IoT last October (after Twitter developer/platform conference).

[http://www.mashery.com/blog/twitter-redefined-
communications...](http://www.mashery.com/blog/twitter-redefined-
communications-backend-apps-and-iot)

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signaler
Slightly disagreeing with Anil here. Yes, Twitter is popular with developers,
so then why is it not fostering them and making developers their star players?

Twitter Should Be A Public Utility [http://blog.higg.so/2015/06/12/on-
twitter/?rev=1](http://blog.higg.so/2015/06/12/on-twitter/?rev=1)

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shpx
I can't be the only one who sees william as a total fraud. Seeing him at a
tech conference (or really endorsing anything tech related) is the best way to
tell if it's been organized by out of touch execs or people that actually
care.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFA7DUM008](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFA7DUM008)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl2h-Ol0pSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl2h-Ol0pSI)

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aero9
twitter as a messaging platform. it's an interesting take, and there's
certainly a gap in the market for it.

~~~
henok
Agree.

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bitwize
The internet has been not for us since AOL broke through...

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ohmshalalala
Hey ya'll Twitter is a government project...look at it's first members, a
bunch of GI's and Navymen...since when were they trendsetters? Oh I guess
since Twitter...and of course #arabspring...also remember how overnight there
were front facing cameras on every phone... Twitter + Selfies.. then Snowden,
oh NSA / surveillance you so trendy

PS I love you for reading this

May all beings propser

