Show HN: Squall – A microblogging platform that replaces tweetstorms

by barisser • 11 years ago

40 28 11 years ago

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.

barisser3• 11 years ago

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

nicwest• 11 years ago

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

protomyth• 11 years ago

I'm not up on the state of screen readers, do any of them look at the EXIF data? I don't think that would be a good solution and am not sure how big a comment can be, but I could be wrong.

benshyong• 11 years ago

That's a great idea. I'm not sure about screen reader support, but it's definitely feasible to put the raw text of a post into the metadata for an image.

We would also have to check whether Twitter preserves this data when it's uploaded with a tweet.

barisser3• 11 years ago

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.

ioddly• 11 years ago

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

How's that work, if you don't mind explaining?

edit: Nevermind, I found it: https://assembly.com/help/basics#how-does-assembly-work

aiiane• 11 years ago

What's your opinion on accessibility?

Fastidious• 11 years ago

Stucked at "Posting tweet..."

captn3m0• 11 years ago

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

bshimmin• 11 years ago

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

joncalhoun• 11 years ago

I would assume it is when a 500 char message is broken into 4 consecutive tweets, or something along those lines.

whatupdave• 11 years ago

Here's an example: https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/570336180849373185

jnbiche• 11 years ago

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?

forthefuture• 11 years ago

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.

barisser3• 11 years ago

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

drvortex• 11 years ago

http://imgur.com/EpY3Ioz

Interface failure all over the place.

karangoeluw• 11 years ago

We'll definitely work on making it better.

EC1• 11 years ago

Looks like a rearrangement of the Assembly logo.

placeybordeaux• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

What do you suggest they should have built instead?

atticusalien• 11 years ago

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.

webwanderings• 11 years ago

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

maxwin• 11 years ago

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.

ArekDymalski• 11 years ago

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

Show HN: Squall – A microblogging platform that replaces tweetstorms

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