

The Very Last Thing I’ll Write About Twitter   - andrewcaito
http://al3x.net/2010/09/15/last-thing-about-twitter.html

======
alanh
Well worth reading the whole thing. It’s not too long, and he’s already
Readability’d it for us, if you will.

But if you don’t have time:

• #NewTwitter will make Twitter more mainstream, and will provide
advertisement opportunities.

• #NewTwitter is a shift away from being a platform towards being a
destination (or “place of consumption,” if you will), and as such further
complicates relationships with third-party developers.

• Twitter should become decentralized, but it’s clearly in Twitter’s best
interested not to.

• Alex circulated a document internally advocating decentralization, and
executives disagreed (understandably).

~~~
zem
and here's a readable article about newtwitter for anyone else who doesn't
have the patience to watch the video: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-
twitter-tips/>

~~~
eavc
I watched the video and was still in the dark.

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ayb
Ultimately Twitter is a business that needs to generate ROI for its investors.

The open API gave them plenty of ideas for functionality and "holes" in their
system, and Twitter has made it clear that they need to fill those holes.

The multiple points of entry also showed them that they needed a seamless user
experience, which is why they launched their own native Blackberry app and
acquired Tweetie, launched an iPad app and now relaunched their web interface.

Many of the twitter.com upgrades were built by someone else on some other site
first, but it is in Twitter's own interest to use those ideas to get more
traffic to twitter.com and ultimately use the traffic to generate revenue.

It is sad to think that Twitter fostered its ecosystem only to strong arm it
and chop it down when it was ready to figure out its monetization strategy.
But those are the perils of building a business off of someone else's
platform.

As a Twitter application developer myself I knew this was a risk, but I have
become painfully aware of it over the past few months. I think their current
trajectory will eventually kill off a good part of the ecosystem that helped
them get to this point.

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pope52
His comments on the difference between Twitter and Facebook are particularly
interesting:

"Previously, developers took data out of Twitter and into the context of their
own applications and services. The new design flips this on its head, bringing
rich embedded content into the site from a host of brand-name web properties.
(It’s worth noting that Facebook has done much the opposite: they started out
with a very centralized build-it-within-our-walls model, then gradually grew
their tendrils out into the web with Facebook Connect.)"

I'm curious how this relates to his later observation that "walled gardens"
are doomed to fail. In both instances, the walls are being chipped away, but
in the former, the content is being brought in, while in the latter, content
is being let out.

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larrywright
This is a nice piece, and makes some very good points.

Completely unrelated: I enjoy reading Alex's writing in the same way I enjoy
reading John Gruber and Paul Graham. He's eloquent, thoughtful, and
passionate.

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merijnv
Disclaimer: I never "got" really Twitter. The service still strikes me as
mostly useless.

Now this could just be me but he says:

"Twitter needs to decentralize [...] my belief that all communications media
will inevitably be decentralized, and that all businesses who build walled
gardens will eventually see them torn down."

So I heard we had this decentralized way of sharing which they call "the web"
which is completely decentralized and without walled gardens. And we had these
technologies called RSS and ATOM for receiving updates on those.

So...he's effectively suggesting we go back to the web and RSS but with
everyone writing shorter messages?

~~~
catch404
I'd been thinking the exact same thing on the drive home today, expanding on
an earlier thought I had that twitter is RSS done right.
<http://twitter.com/catch404/status/24605947455>

I think they did this by providing a consistent format (both data format and
by enforcing limits), a central view and a usable api. RSS/ATOM just didn't
get this right. Twitter forces people to get their message across in a small
amount of characters. RSS/ATOM again is inconsistent in mainly due to it
trying to be a portable medium (reading full stories in a reader). I guess the
twitter model is more natural?

Perhaps there is a place for adopting a twitter based format for future rss
feeds and making viewers around this.

I personally like the idea of sites having a dedicated twitter account to post
updates to, I don't use rss feeds but like getting information via twitter.

~~~
merijnv
I don't think Twitter can ever really replace RSS/ATOM.

I have a handful of sites I follow (as in really read every update) and Opera
having integrated RSS I get a nice reminder popup whenever there's an update.
For me Twitter wouldn't work for this as the amount of incoming messages on
Twitter is usually to large and it would be distracting.

To be honest I don't really see any problems in the RSS system. I don't really
see why enforcing a data format or enforcing limits makes it more usable? I
kinda like getting comics delivered straight to my browser's RSS feeds and
being able to read blog posts directly in there as well.

Now Twitter would make for an exceptional social RSS where I could find one-of
articles related to my interests. Which I guess seems kinda similar to
FriendFeed (which I've never used since no one I find interesting is on there)
or Hacker News (but without the discussion and a slightly different topic
selection).

The main problem I have is that people keep insisting on posting completely
uninteresting tweets (such as what they're doing) or using it as a
conversation tool. This kind of noise tends to drown its use as a social RSS
feed for me.

~~~
catch404
The method I described would only have the same amount of traffic as an RSS
feed as it would just be updating headlines.

I guess it just depends on use. I never got into using an rss reader but
follow a bunch of projects/people/companies on twitter and can quickly browse
their updates, and follow a shortened link. I like the portability of twitter
over different platforms too.

Just suits how I work.

------
heinel
Is it just me but isn't it a bit too early to say Twitter is trying to wall
itself in? Are they taking down the APIs?

From what I can see here they just want Twitter.com to be a viable (and
profitable) business. Why wouldn't anyone want that? In fact, I think it's
about time Twitter finally stepped up to define just what kind of a service
Twitter really is about. If anything it would be a nice stepping stone to
introduce to people who don't yet get it's structure to try it out.

Yes, there are third-party developers who have created their own platforms and
in a sense helped define the medium. There are many such choices, but really
many of the functions they provide overlap. Do we really need that many
different Twitter clients with minute differences? If Twitter were to provide
the basic functions itself, then I'd say that this is a good time for third-
party developers to think up new ways to diversify themselves. Wasn't there
just not so long ago someone posted a HTML5 tower defense game up here that
has a Twitter scoreboard? Why not expand on that?

------
mortenjorck
It's an interesting question, one that Twitter is at the center of now but one
that's not limited to Twitter: Where do we draw the line between a technology
company and the culture its technology has spawned?

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aresant
Nail on head for me:

". . . Twitter Platform primarily serves Twitter’s interests, in stark
contrast to the era of API growth . . ."

and his rueful close in "I believe that Twitter as a medium is and should be
distinct from Twitter as a business."

Twitter got to where they are based on open standards, dev empowerment, etc.

Thanks to their money in the bank and lack of need for a biz model they had
ample time to own it, be the standard, become the medium - what is a Twitter
exactly if not a Twitter?

Going to be very interesting to see where this next step takes them.

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riffic
Twitter.com is not a protocol, it is a service. I think it is also important
to note that it isn't a public utility either. right now it is dangerous to
place all your eggs in a single basket. When you only have one service
provider you lose control of things such as dependability, namespace, access,
etc. These are things that most may be willing to let someone else provide for
them, but some may want to control these and other aspects of microblogging. A
federated design with multiple independent service providers would go a long
way to help fix these shortcomings.

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dotcoma
or, in other words: they'll keep on copying stuff other companies, like
Tweetmeme, have done with their data so far.

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pointillistic
Can Twitter or Facebook become a Medium? In response to Alex Payne:
[http://benatlas.com/2010/09/can-twitter-or-facebook-
become-a...](http://benatlas.com/2010/09/can-twitter-or-facebook-become-a-
medium/)

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mkramlich
pretty classy post by a pretty key ex-employee. i wish all were like this.

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woodzowl307
very nice

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joey_bananas
Maybe this #newtwitter is just not going down several times a day. That'd sure
be revolutionary.

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riffic
>Twitter needs to decentralize or it will die.

told ya so

