

Show HN: Circular, an open source clone of Buffer - julien_c
http://circular.io/

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julien_c
Circular developer here. Ok, so last month I launched an open source clone of
Buffer, built on top of Backbone, Bootstrap and MongoDB, and named Tampon.

Many people hated the name... However, the app as well as the open source
project have seen some nice early adoption, so I've gone ahead and chosen a
less controversial one.

I've also implemented multi-account support, which was by far the #1 feature
request from users (As suggested by 37Signals I've discarded every other
feature request :)), as well as many many other improvements.

Let me know what you think!

~~~
engtech
Good on you for renaming the project... but why would you chose that name in
the first place?

I'm not trying to start a flame war -- just curious because I've been in a
similar situation.

After university I named the first C unit test framework I wrote the oh-so-
obvious C*NT. At the time I thought I was being funny, but over a decade later
and I can see that this is a symptom of the underlying misogyny/"boy's club"
that is high tech.

~~~
lmm
Would you consider a project called DICK or COCK to be misogynistic too?

Without wanting to start an argument, your example doesn't strike me as
misogynistic; it doesn't seem like it would be any more offputting to women
than to men, if we're assuming the same baseline personality.

~~~
grimboy
Second wave feminists decided that that word in particular was bad no matter
the context.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
And third-wave feminism flirted with post-structuralism..

~~~
reinhardt
You guys should stop poking fun at feminism and check your privilege m'kay?

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aaronblohowiak
no poking fun intended, merely a historical note that feminism (as a loosely-
defined movement) had changing views about language and its use... if someone
were to just hear about second-wave feminist stances on the language of
oppression, they might have a hard time understanding things like the "slut
walk" and other acts of linguistic reclamation.

~~~
reinhardt
Kinda glad that my sarcasm went mostly undetected, otherwise it would have
been downvoted to oblivion.

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joelhooks
I think this is great, outside of plastering Buffer's name all over the thing.
Seems kinda shitty to do. Open source tweet scheduler? Awesome. Slapping
Buffer all over the thing to shimmy into their Google juice (or whatever) to
promote it? Not as awesome.

~~~
julien_c
I get your point. It was actually more of a "nod of the head" to them, but I
can see why it would look unelegant. I've actually started pitching it as open
source tweet scheduler, actually.

~~~
juddlyon
I agree. If you truly want to pay homage, perhaps wording like "inspired by
Buffer" would work a little better.

Nonetheless, congrats on shipping, can't wait to check it out.

~~~
julien_c
It actually says "Inspired by Buffer" on the homepage, with a link to Buffer
:)

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rolandal
I'm curious to see how Joel, Leo, and Tom perceive this open-source version
effecting their business.

I'm a long time buffer user, and paying customer, and think that this would
actually help the sales pipeline for them. The MVP of Circular is so narrow
(given only 1 dev), that it would make me wish for more, and with the
attribution Julien gave to Buffer hopefully users will click-through.

Since the Buffer guys have a referral system already in place, maybe you can
use Circular to generate some lead gen/affiliate income for you Julien. I
would suggest reaching out to them, they are all really cool guys!

Just an idea - best of luck!

~~~
joelg87
Thanks for the kind words Roland, awesome to see you here.

Yep, you're right - I think what Julien is doing is really great. I've been in
touch with him via email too, been great to talk a little and looking forward
to more conversation :-)

I think it's great that there are multiple offerings out there, to raise
awareness of this kind of service is really key right now as we gain traction
and as more and more people find that something like Buffer can be super
useful for them. We've had quite a few competitors come and go along our
journey so far, and I expect to see more and more. I think it's only a good
thing.

Good thinking on ways to work together, I think Julien and I will chat for
sure :-)

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aymeric
I am divided. As a developer, I think open source is great. As an
entrepreneur, having more people release stuff for free devalues my work on
the long term. I would say a good middle ground would be that open source
should only be used to provide tools to developers, not to release production
features.

A few years back, people would buy a software $25, now they complain when your
app is over $1 (thanks Apple).

~~~
pgeorgi
So open source should serve you as a developer, but not those others that are
mere users?

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olalonde
If it serves developers it serves users as well. You can produce more, faster,
cheaper which is good for users.

~~~
pgeorgi
Sure, and open source products serve users even better (assuming a certain
quality)

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tommoor
Just as a fun comparison we currently have 235,600 updates in the queue at
Buffer :-)

~~~
fredoliveira
That sounds like not a great twitter/facebook feed you're managing with
buffer, no? Do people care about the feed, if it's generic enough to warrant
200k+ queued posts?

~~~
bwtk
He means across all accounts registered with Buffer, not one individual
account.

~~~
fredoliveira
Thanks for clarifying. Totally missed clicking his username :-)

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kyro
A little suggestion for the homepage: Take away that circle and move up the
feature boxes. That empty space in the middle adds absolutely nothing, and the
queue number can be placed elsewhere.

~~~
XaspR8d
I didn't remember what Buffer was, so for the first few moments I thought the
circle _was_ the feature. _Show HN: a nice little CSS loopy thing for
Bootstrap._

(Kudos to the team on the real project though - a lot more impressive!)

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daenz
This is such a small nitpick, but the rotating circle is very confusing to me.
The shadow and the highlight rotate too, suggesting that the "light" is
rotating with it. Feels really out of place.

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igorgue
My impression was "oh that's what buffer is for". I trust open source software
a lot more than closed source. Also their landing page explain what it is
better than Buffer.

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nlh
Congrats on the re-launch (and re-name ;) Looks promising!

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jhund
I don't think this is a threat to buffer. There are two components to the
buffer business:

1) the software: this can be copied or re-implemented fairly easily (see this
new project). Happens all the time. Almost every product has an open source
clone.

2) the schlep: doing marketing, building a business, keep the servers humming,
pay the bills, be available and respond to customers...

The second part cannot be copied easily and takes a lot more effort and
commitment than the first. This is what makes a business defensible and
viable. And this is what separates companies like Github, Heroku, etc. from
"Look-what-I-built-over-the-weekend" projects.

~~~
SyneRyder
There's also the Buffer ecosystem; they have an iPhone app and they're already
built-in as a sharing feature on many iOS & Android apps. It will take a while
for Circular to match that. The more I look at what Buffer is doing, the more
impressed I am.

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webwanderings
I could never figure out how this Buffer thing works. Why is there a multiple
time slots and why does it say Posting Schedule "every day"? Does this mean
the app will send the same tweet repeatedly on the same time every day? Or how
does the app choose which tweet to send at which time?

This may sound like a support question but given that you have cloned a
service hence buffer is probably popular already, but I believe there is
already a schedule feature in tweetdeck, so why should anyone use these
services just to schedule a tweet?

~~~
heeton
I fill up my buffer with things I want to tweet, then every day at the
specified times, it tweets the top item from that list. It doesn't send twice,
and it's easier for me than scheduling every tweet.

~~~
webwanderings
So is it a one-to-one tweet/time-slot match? I can see a usefulness of filling
up the stream and letting the schedule do its work. But this must be a feature
most suitable for marketers etc, no? As a casual sharing, I don't tweet a lot
anyway so I guess I have no need for scheduling.

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usea
I can't figure out what your site does (beyond "sharing tweets") by looking at
it. I assume that information is hidden behind the login? I'm not going to
sign in to a site just to figure out what it does, much less authenticate via
another service.

Is this so I can tweet a bunch in a short period, and the service will spread
them out over the day? I seriously have no idea.

Sorry if this comes across as rude, I don't intend it to be. I just cannot
figure out what the service actually does.

~~~
julien_c
Yes that's it.

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rhl
I've been using it, and though this is a very simple MVP, the value is very
clear and there are some very nice product touches.

All in all, very promising app!

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alpb
Buffer does the stuff very good actually, I use its free tier and I couldn't
even approach to its limit, personally. But having alternatives is always very
good and apparently you spent really good time on this project. I'd love to
hear a blog address where we can follow your stories about your development of
Circular.

~~~
julien_c
Well, one limit you can reach quickly with Buffer's free tier is if you want
to use it with multiple accounts on the same platform (say, multiple Twitter
accounts).

Thanks for the kind words, I'll think about writing something about the app's
dev!

------
thomseddon
Just to hop in on the discussion, I have just launched a similar (hosted!)
service similar to circular(/tampon)/buffer/hootsuite except it's completely
white label and self brandable: <http://sashboard.com>

~~~
julien_c
This is interesting, though it's probably more relevant for Facebook posting
than for Twitter, as Twitter doesn't display the app name anymore (and it's a
shame!).

~~~
thomseddon
True, but it's still in the meta and many 3rd party apps and services still
display it, it's even shown in tweetdeck for example (I tried to swap the
twitter picture for a tweetdeck screen shot but tweetdeck just keeps crashing
(maybe not that many people see it after all ;)).

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Foomandoonian
Why does it have to be such a blatant steal of the Buffer design?

Being 'inspired' to produce a similar (but open) service is a fairly noble
goal, but slavishly imitating the UI is bad form, surely? You should have
called it 'Blue Buffer'.

------
dangravell
I used to use Timely, does this replace that service? Seems to...

My main concern is that if this is free as in both speech _and_ beer, how will
the service be supported? I don't want to allow access to YATC and see it die.

~~~
joelg87
Hey. I definitely encourage you to try Circular. If you want to try Buffer
too, then if it helps then I'm happy to let you know we're funded and
profitable, 7 in the team. Let me know if you have any other questions! :-)

------
knes
Congrats.

I missed your first show HN so I'm going to give it a go now.

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sarhus
Looks great, you could add an animated logo, on mouse hover... something that
will make it spin ;) here's the CSS

<http://pastie.org/5143946>

~~~
julien_c
Nice! Wrong direction though, right?

~~~
sarhus
yep, you got it right now. looks nice

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oxwrist
At least it's not Tampon anymore.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4484526>

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jqueryin
Cool side project. I wish there was a features page listing exactly what's
included in the app and what it looks like once setup.

~~~
julien_c
You can check out the screenshots in the Chrome Web app's listing:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/circular/kagidkiei...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/circular/kagidkieilpkdijgchiegjbienmojffk)

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frozenport
Needs more info for people who don't twitter. Perhaps a ussage case that is
phrased without reference to twitter.

~~~
dchuk
It's a tool to schedule tweets and easily view your tweet analytics, this app
doesn't exist without Twitter.

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grumps
Great!!! I really like it... Only thing I need now is to easily do this via
Android.

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steeves
You should auto shorten urls

~~~
antr
+1 if connected to one's Bitly account/vanity URL

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adorable
Awesome app I like the way you show real-time stat on the homepage

~~~
adorable
oh, and the new color for the navigation bar is great, too

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spolu
Fantastic new UI. The service is still as useful as it was!

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lolizbak
Love the UI and the auto-quotes on empty posts :)

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slajax
What was the old domain when it was still tampon?

~~~
julien_c
tamponapp.com

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donniezazen
I don't have a twitter account to log in.

~~~
julien_c
Then the app would probably be of little use to you anyways :)

~~~
donniezazen
True I signed up for Buffer but never used as I am not into social networking.

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sturmeh
Any plans for mobile apps in the pipes?

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gabhubert
Better name!

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alexjarvis
Shame it's written in PHP

~~~
josegonzalez
Why is it a shame?

~~~
bdcravens
Because it's not what the cool kids are using.

I was at a conference where pud spoke. As for using a "startup" worthy
language versus what you feel most comfortable in, he said (more or less a
quote), "98% of all web sites fail, and yours probably will too, so might as
use the language you want and are most productive in"

~~~
cmccabe
Indeed. You wouldn't want to risk compromising your fractal of failure by
throwing a successful technical decision into the mix.

[http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-
de...](http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/)

I'm sorry... it was just too, too easy.

