
Show HN: Squall – A microblogging platform that replaces tweetstorms - barisser
http://squall.io
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forthefuture
I don't know if it's part of the platform, but all of the watermarking seems a
little over the top. By that I mean the "sent from Squall", and "by...via
@SquallApp".

I'd put forth that you don't need those things to have people understand where
the image came from; the link in the twitter post that starts with
"squall.io/", and anyone following the link ends up at the site.

Not that it's overwhelming, it's just that I don't personally get any value
out of those lines of text being there, and it takes away from the concision
of the real post.

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barisser
You make a fair point. We're still adjusting the branding. I could see us
tuning it down.

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placeybordeaux
This not solving a real problem. This problem was entirely invented by twitter
and is slowly being degraded in a horrible, suboptimal way.

Maybe I have just having a shitty day, but it is really sad to see people
spending time solving silly human imposed problems.

~~~
alex_g
What do you suggest they should have built instead?

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atticusalien
Nothing. Just use any already existing blog platform. No one says you have to
make new blog posts all the time. Just post when you have something valuable
to say.

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wanda
I agree. Instead of dealing with the possibility that no one would pay
attention to his blog, he tries to levy his existing followers by bringing the
blog to twitter in the most absurd way possible. If everybody's going to start
tweeting images I can kiss my mobile data good bye, all because some dude
couldn't bear the thought of being nobody in the blogosphere.

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giancarlostoro
I saw a similar application here on HN one of the valid points against this is
that you cannot really parse the text through the image, so it becomes a
barrier against visually impaired users. At first I was thinking it was going
to be links to a bigger tweet or something similar.

~~~
barisser
One difference with Squall is that, while the post is an image on Twitter, it
lives on as a text post on Squall.io. So you can always follow the link and
parse the text there.

Also the images are highly legible. Check out this Squall for example:
[https://twitter.com/bshyong/status/573557768285732864](https://twitter.com/bshyong/status/573557768285732864)

~~~
nicwest
aren't you going to have issues like this in the twitter stream, where the top
and bottom of the image is lost:

[http://i.imgur.com/6jfKcFW.png](http://i.imgur.com/6jfKcFW.png)

~~~
danneu
You see the title and a legible paragraph when you're scrolling through a feed
of random tweets. Seems superior to any alternative I can think of.

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jnbiche
Nice work, just read about your project in an Assembly email.

That said, based on all of the Squall posts I've looked at, I can only read a
fraction of the image. The rest is obscured by Twitter.

Given this state of affairs, how is Squall better than just posting a link to
a Gist, or something like that, since I have to click on the link to read the
full post in both cases?

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bshimmin
What is a "tweetstorm"? A rapid series of tweets on a particular event or
topic?

~~~
whatupdave
Here's an example:
[https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/570336180849373185](https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/570336180849373185)

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captn3m0
Nice work austin! (Fellow assembly user)

Thoughts: \- I was wondering about this exact same thing the other day.
Twitter photos have made it really easy to break the 140 character rule, and
there are lots of wordpics in my stream these days. This seems like a
brilliant hack. \- [BUG] No space between "Posted" and "Month" \- It currently
counts self-views as well. Maybe remove them from the count? Should be
possible as long as images are not on a CDN, I think

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maxwin
Good idea. I've seen similar things in China Weibo a few years ago. It is a
very popular way to write one long tweet(weibo). It seems like Chinese
companies may start from copying but they can gradually come up with
innovative ideas. Wechat is another example. I think its platform beats what's
app, line.

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barisser
Hi, core team here from Squall. I'd be happy to answer any questions/comments.

Squall is a community-built product on Assembly. So each contributor gets some
fraction of ownership, commensurate with their contribution to the product.

I'd highly suggest writing a Squall post. It's an easy way to say more on
Twitter.

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aiiane
What's your opinion on accessibility?

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webwanderings
So you are basically converting text to images, eliminating the character
limit? I guess hashtag and @connect wouldn't work in this solution?

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EC1
Looks like a rearrangement of the Assembly logo.

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drvortex
[http://imgur.com/EpY3Ioz](http://imgur.com/EpY3Ioz)

Interface failure all over the place.

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karangoeluw
We'll definitely work on making it better.

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ArekDymalski
This could be really powerful if they will enhance the message editor (images,
formatting etc.)

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Fastidious
Stucked at "Posting tweet..."

