Ten Things Twitter is Not

http://seldo.com/weblog/2009/05/05/ten_things_twitter_is_not

by seldo • 17 years ago

37 25 17 years ago

0. Profitable (yet)

rmc002• 17 years ago

Most definitely yet. Twitter search has some real potential. It's growing rapidly as a place that people can search for quick reviews of restaurants, movies, etc.

ryanwaggoner3• 17 years ago

This makes no sense. Why would I use twitter to look for reviews on restaurants instead of Yelp? Why would I use Twitter for movie reviews over metacritic or rotten tomatoes? Hell, if I'm going to use search to look for reviews on something, why wouldn't I just use Google?

TomOfTTB• 17 years ago

Good Article. I'm not Twitter's biggest fan but if I'm honest with myself I have to admit a lot of what I don't like about the service isn't from the service itself but from the crazy hype that surrounds it.

In the end Twitter is a nice little service that provides a function that a lot of people enjoy. When seeing it that way it's hard to have something against it. It's only when people start claiming it will replace e-mail or be the news service of the next century that I get annoyed.

netsp• 17 years ago

Twitter's naming is very clever. I was talking to my girlfriend about birds the other day in the park. "I wonder what they're saying? 'I'm here.' 'I'm here?' 'Hungry' 'Scared' 'Happy?'" We decided they're just saying 'tweet tweet.'

A lot of the time that's what we do too. We communicate just for the sake of it. People talk to their babies. It's important to talk to your baby. It doesn't really matter what you say specifically, but you should say nice comforting things. Same with other people. "Hi, Howya goin." "nottaa-bother' 'tweet tweet.'

It still carries information.

irrelative• 17 years ago

I'm a little disappointed that Twitter has become the next big thing. Does it seem to everyone else that the next big thing has gotten easier and easier for the average programmer to make?

Google made sense as king of the hill, since it solved a relatively hard problem incredibly well. Then came Facebook, which solved a fairly easy problem, but scaled really well. Now Twitter has come along and solved a relatively simple problem, and they probably have the scaling issue figured out finally. Maybe I've just become jaded, but I thought we expected more from the next big thing both in terms of execution and difficulty.

froo• 17 years ago

I'm a little disappointed that Twitter has become the next big thing. Does it seem to everyone else that the next big thing has gotten easier and easier for the average programmer to make?

It's not disappointing at all, just because something is easy to code, doesn't necessarily mean it's any less of a valid problem nor does this constitute a worthless business.

Look at say amazon.com - Not entirely difficult to code, in fact, many point-and-click webstore solutions already exist. The fact is, they were in the right place, the right time, the right scale and worked harder than anyone else.

I think you're underestimating the value of working hard - irrespective of problem difficulty. Twitter might have stumbled early due to some bad early choices, but that's business. Even the much hallowed Google makes errors and bad judgement calls.

but I thought we expected more from the next big thing both in terms of execution and difficulty.

You don't think the huge media blitz that Twitter is getting at the moment hasn't been seeded by Twitter themselves? It was a very clever marketing ploy that has been executed well.

marcusbooster• 17 years ago

Shouldn't technology make life less difficult?

riffic2• 17 years ago

Twitter is not a public utility. People should really be looking into OpenMicroBlogging, and decentralization/federation with systems you set up and control, such as Laconica. This allows you to control the namespace, and downtime becomes your own problem.

sharkbrainguy• 17 years ago

   ... and downtime becomes your own problem.

I think I can see what you're getting at here, but this sure doesn't sound like something most people want to get into

riffic2• 17 years ago

well, not for individuals. But as far as organizations/agencies, relying on twitter as a utility is ludicrous.

brc• 17 years ago

11. Immune to spammers

ryanwaggoner3• 17 years ago

Immune? Who do you think half of their users are?

thwarted2• 17 years ago

Exactly. The 11th thing twitter is not is immune to spammers.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

11. An RSS replacement http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595186

12. A potential Apple acquisition http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=594847

seldo• 17 years ago

Re: #11, yeah, totally. The solution to information overload is to overload yourself on Twitter instead?

I do believe that the "unread posts" model for RSS readers is counter-productive, and is taking RSS as a consumer technology with it, but it's not dead yet.

lucumo• 17 years ago

> I do believe that the "unread posts" model for RSS readers is counter-productive, and is taking RSS as a consumer technology with it

Can you elaborate on why you think that?

axod• 17 years ago

>> "celebrities started turning up on Twitter once they heard it was getting popular. They didn't make it popular in the first place. It got popular because it was useful."

I don't know, myself, and I'm sure several others, only bothered with it to see @stephenfry tweets. And I'm pretty sure he's been on it for a long time now.

doug_m• 17 years ago

I agree - in the UK Twitter seemed to stay under the radar for a long time compared to the US then one week the BBC seemed to brief staff on it and the large scale public adoption was overnight and very much celebrity or central-media driven.

knightrider• 17 years ago

    Daniel Schorr two recent examples of breaking the study's implication of breaking and sometimes debunked stories that played members ironically highlighting and the need to the The original study by Antonio Damasio and college guest on the The Daily Show and instream media reports of you. A large number of mainstream media coverage of the service saying "there's no surprise young people by middle aged people by middle aged people by middle aged people by middle aged people love it - accounts of events lacked rigorous fact-checking and other than pay attention to "constant social networking to recent exaggerated the Daily Show, the strip characters ironically highlighting the triviality of "twitter" and that Twitter format is not good (no pun intended).

kaiuhl• 17 years ago

This article reads as wishful thinking of what Twitter is and will become from the viewpoint of the San Francisco startup scene who have using Twitter now for a few years and have watched it morph.

Twitter could be, especially in the future, many of those numbered items; it is only wishful thinking that people not use it for vanity or to actually answer the question, "what are you doing?" or as a replacement for quick emails or use it as a blog. One needs only look toward Birdhouse to see how serious publishing on Twitter can be taken.

Something Twitter is not: definable during its rapid growth.

Ten Things Twitter is Not

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