Which is just why someone like me will never EVER really on all this 'cloud computing' everyone keeps blathering on about! Why? Because it means that you are handing your files, your pics, your docs etc, over to others who you have actually no control over whatsoever. Back up your pics, docs, files onto an external hard drive in your home and its up to you to police it, look after it, you are in total control and so if for any reason you then lost it all, its your fault and not someone elses. As we have witnessed these last few days, servers can be brought down, whole sites and apps brought down, and not one of us had any control over what was occuring Robert! As you have learned with Flickr (and which incidentally applies to others as well) it is foolhardy to put anything anywhere that is completely controlled by others. Well, that's this Granny's view anyway for what its worth. Remember that old saying 'don't put all your eggs into one basket' TG
Hugh Isaacs II
· 4 months ago
I think where cloud computing will prosper is in synchronizing your files with the cloud, not just storing them in the cloud.
I know Microsoft is headed in this direction with Live Mesh, and if Picasas folder sync feature is any evidence I'd say Google is too.
facebook-689576096
· 4 months ago
Sorry Granny, but in the long run your approach will result in more data loss than putting your content up on the cloud.
Very few people have the discipline to migrate their archives to the latest technology as they upgrade their systems. I personally have lived through several storage media format changes: mag tape, floppies, SCSI drive, etc. Due to laziness, most of the files stored on these media did not survive the transition.
People forget their home is also a single point of failure. Theft, earthquake, leaky roof could wipe out your entire archive.
I suggest doing both: putting content up in the cloud and storing it locally. It is cheap and getting easier synchronize both every day.
I'll plug Smugmug for photos, Google / Yahoo for email, and Amazon for blobs.
Apostol Apostolov
· 4 months ago
If that is going to make Robert Scoble get over it, we all could ChipIn.com a dollar and he could afford a Time Machine 2Gb.
howardlindzon
· 4 months ago
dude...you sound pissed :)
good rant.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
Yeah, I am. I've seen developers and users get mistreated by Twitter and I've heard more than enough stories to get my head spinning.
ibrahimo
· 4 months ago
I am with you with nearly every point, although I am new to twitter as a registered user, but I spent endless hours reading tweets here and there. What really shocked me regarding twitter was actually that year when it kept going down and the users never left, although there were other GOOD alternatives which had better user friendly interfaces, more options, better views, yet they are either shut down now or going to shutdown eventually. I think its all in the PR/Marketing. I always take Youtube as an example, before it even existed and after it started, a number of video sites were online and even better (technically) than youtube, but can you tell me why youtube is the most successful (stats wise at least if not money wise) video sharing website on the internet?
OR MAYBE AM JUST CRAZY ...
AlexSchleber
· 4 months ago
The reason: branding / brand names. "Twitter" works well, while Jaiku and Pownce sucked as brand names. Yeah, it can be as simple as that...
Twitter and the "Tweety-bird" are evocative to some extent of what Twitter is all about, hence the mass proliferation of an entire Twitter/Tweet lingo, tons of new 3rd party app names, etc.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
In addition to Alex's points, developers are what got me onto Twitter and who kept me there. I noticed the developers weren't leaving and neither were the real early adopter types (I follow them wherever they go).
Anthony Farrior
· 4 months ago
That's a curious comment there Robert. What early adopters do you follow that's on something before you?
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
I follow thousands of early adopters and regularly go to conferences and meet up with innovators, developers, and others. And I talk with thousands more over on FriedFeed. I get to see new things that are getting adoption pretty quickly.
which demonstrates that I have a lot of followers who won’t do anything I ask them to
We all think you're awfully cute, Robert, but we also have a brain and free will.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
I know, I just was having some fun with you all. But, seriously, I can tell that most of the people who say they are following me aren't following at all. Heck, it's worse than that. The other day a couple of people linked to me and they have hundreds of thousands of followers (almost a million). I only got a few dozen links. Are followers who aren't willing to even click on a link worth anything? I don't think so. The only reason this stuff is fun is if there's some engagement there and, if you care about monetization, brands will mostly only pay to be next to media types who can get their audience to do something.
Mitch
· 4 months ago
What brands do you jump through hoops for on a day-to-day basis then?
andrewmueller
· 4 months ago
Robert, following on Twitter is a misnomer and the use of this term is diminishing our ability to truly understand the interactions that are taking place on Twitter and our ability to deliver value to the our "followers" and in your case the brands that you align yourself with. We don’t follow people on twitter any more than we follow a TV or Radio station. We tune in from time to time and hear what’s on the air, but for the most of us we miss most of what has been broadcast.
The simple fact that a follower doesn't click on a link doesn't mean that they are worthless. It may be that the particular link just doesn't interest them or that they don't have the time to act right then when they see it. This doesn't mean that something else wont interest or they wouldn't have acted if they had the time. The real power of having influence is connecting people to brands that add value to their lives and the true measure of this is not clicks but conversions. If you or anyone else is going to be valuable to a brand you will need to be able to impact conversions and this will likely take place in both visible and trackable ways (tracked clicks moving through the conversion process) as well as, unseen ways (actions taken because you influence them through your communications and alliances).
Sanne Buurma
· 4 months ago
Hey Robert,
Good blog post.
Your concerns are just and maybe that's also why they don't feature a history of your twitter items. Which is strange to say the least, as the other things you point out.
Twitter also gives you the choice to use it your way, which made it a fast growing thing. I for one have only followed the people I think are interesting and have something to add to my world. The followers that only want to have me follow them back are only adding to my follower count, which in fact doesn't say that much.
On the other hand; like anything in the world, nothing lasts forever, but with the digital age you sure have more possibilities to keep data for a more extended period of time.
Louis Gray
· 4 months ago
1) Make sure you change Feedly to FeedBurner in the story. Google never bought Feedly, though Edwin might love that. :)
2) Twitter has played fast and loose with what they want to be when they grow up. They are growing like a weed, but what do you do with weeds? You pluck them out. What we've seen happen with Twitter as it moved from toy to infrastructure is that they turned their backs on Silicon Valley and wanted to go Hollywood. They did, but they forgot to invest in a network and server architecture to let them meet their full potential.
3) The issues with developers are dramatically poor. The Google Group discussions with developers have been a start, but this entire weekend, following the DDOS attack, the group has been under the care of a part-time guy who just came to the company a short while ago, not one of their known vets. And Twitter lets the developers learn, after the fact, that something has changed, without warning.
4) I don't care so much about the URL shortener game. I know that thanks to Twitter not letting search be true search, my old tweets are almost impossible to find. I used tr.im for a side project, but have been using bit.ly more, thanks to stats. And yes, FriendFeed uses ff.im, but I trust those guys to invest in keeping it up, even if FriendFeed shut down some day.
5) Change doesn't happen overnight. It's likely you'll look back on this post in months or a year, and laugh about how you were wrong and Twitter won anyway. It sucks when the guys who possibly didn't deserve it and didn't treat their community right end up winning anyway. But simple is defeating quality right now.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
Thanks Louis, I changed that to FeedBurner. Oh, I do agree that I'm almost certainly wrong here and that Twitter will go onto extraordinary success. The Twitter brand is getting sprayed EVERYWHERE and Twitter doesn't need to care about geeks or developers or, really, anyone anymore. Except that dratty monetization thing and I'm sure they'll figure out some way to make the billion plus that @ev wants to make. It's clear he won't accept anything less. Anyway, if even YOU are agreeing with most of my points then I guess I'm not so nutty. Now, the question is, can Twitter be a multi billion dollar company just on the backs of celebrities and brands (and brands aren't solidly on Twitter the way the celebrities are) or does it need to become a platform play where every device in your life is spraying out Tweets? (The London Tower Bridge already is, for instance). THAT is where I think the real money and opportunity are, but that still is in play. The celebrities, are, definitely, locked up. At least for now, but if the geeks keep telling me they are pissed that might even come back into play in the future.
Louis Gray
· 4 months ago
I like your note saying "if even YOU are agreeing with most of my points". Ha.
I have a long track record of agreeing with 95% of all your commentary, and often get knocked for our overlap. That we disagree on some things and talk about them publicly is part of the fun of blogging and social networking. You can trust what I write.
I think the celebrities "today" are locked up. I wouldn't see Oprah's use of Twitter as a success, and I wouldn't see Trent Reznor leaving Twitter as a success - or Kanye West saying other people tweet on his behalf (like Britney does openly). There is some serious real adoption to go before saying the battle is over.
Mitch
· 4 months ago
Louis - Can you explain why you expect FriendFeed would keep ff.im going if FriendFeed were to fold?
What would be much more plausible to me is a situation where one of Google's services shuts down but they allow you to export your history from that service (Google Reader Shared Items, for example) to another. If FriendFeed were to fold, someone else with resources would have to take over the ff.im portion since there is no parent company running FriendFeed.
Louis Gray
· 4 months ago
I know my comment on ff.im sounds silly, but I've gotten to know the FriendFeed team over the last two years, and I believe I trust them with my data. I trust them to make the right long-term decision for things like the URL shortener, even in the chance their business was not a success.
Mitch
· 4 months ago
Louis - Your point #5 could be said for any blog post you've ever written (the part about time revealing miscalculations). Except for maybe some of your sports or TiVo articles. Are you trying to be ironic here? Are you criticizing your own work via proxy?
Your point #4 doesn't exactly make a point. You say you don't care about the URL shortener game and go on to mention search, but then flip back to URL shorteners by discussing which ones you do and don't use. What exactly is the message?
Louis Gray
· 4 months ago
So should I interpret your first comment as my being slammed, that I'm always wrong on tech? What I am saying is that even if someone like Robert (or me) gets frustrated and we see it through our lens, that the public doesn't always do so, and time may go on to show us wrong.
I don't care so much about the old links I have put into Twitter because Twitter can't let people easily find them. I mentioned specifically tr.im and bit.ly to illustrate how I had not chosen one for all my activity, and even with the recent news, am not "impacted" much by tr.im going away. The message is that Twitter has a lot of growing up to do in the search and discovery and records retention department before we can rely on any of it.
mathys
· 4 months ago
The fact that you get competition mentioned by Twitter on either their partners page or the homepage and there is no way to compete is really strange and unprofessional. I actually pisses me off the most... I sent Biz several emails about it, without any reply. He used to reply to other mails...
AlexSchleber
· 4 months ago
Great post, Robert. Couldn't have really said it better myself. I have previously warned about the URL shortener "captive" issue here: http://3on.us/diy-tinyurl
It is a shame that Twitter is already displaying some of the same signs of big co. arrogance that MSFT and more recently Apple (see Jason Calacanis' current post/email) are tending towards. Before Twitter ever having earned a dime no less...
Just wrote this today as a footnote to Jason's post:
"... am musing about the question of whether all large/successful companies (in this case a post-1997 resurgent Apple riding the wave of their iPod and iPhone dominance) are more or less "doomed" to live out "The Powerbroker" archetype, becoming paranoid/controlling, throwing their proverbial weight around, and beginning to bully all and sundry.
Maybe I have been a little too harsh in judging Microsoft in the past, maybe these developments are psychologically... almost unavoidable...?!?"
Firstly, I agree it's total bullcrap that Twitter uses a network of 'friends' rather then the best providers, when looking for partners and that awful SUL. It's too open to manipulation and causes distrust.
Secondly, outsourcing ANY third party provider to store 'your stuff' takes a huge leap of faith. I see you are using DisQus for your comments. Let's hope for your sake it stays in business and is reliable, or your outsourced comments might go missing! This is not a pop at DisCus (a good service) - It's just open to all the same problems, as the URL shortners you mentioned in your post.
Nice post Robert.
Jim
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
Jim: did you know that my comments are stored two places: 1. Inside my Wordpress instance at Rackspace. 2. At Disqus' servers. I can uninstall Disqus at any time and go back to just Wordpress comments or I can switch to JS-Kit, for instance. This makes me very happy with Disqus and makes me think well of the entire company and is a reason I haven't yet switched to JS-Kit, even though JS-Kit has newer cooler features. On the other hand, JS-Kit has the same advantages, which is why we use them on building43. :-)
Jim Connolly
· 4 months ago
Robert,
I thought when you removed discus, you were left with all the comments made direct to the blog - but NOT those it pulled in from other platforms; like friendfeed / twitter etc. As some of the comments left here on the blog refer to comments left on other platforms, retaining only those that were made here on the blog would make the comments look disjointed.
Sorry if I misunderstood, but that's what I have previously thought.
Jim
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
You're right. Only native comments that are left directly on the blog are kept in both Disqus and Wordpress. I forgot about that.
Jim Connolly
· 4 months ago
Worth thinking about!
Chris Saad
· 4 months ago
Actually with JS-Kit Echo both direct and social comments are imported into the WP database ;)
Name
· 4 months ago
"The issue is more about having no chance to succeed as success would be defined in this area, and being distracted from ventures where inside connections don’t determine success or failure, which they do on Twitter"
That's sums it up. And I know what I'm talking about, I'm one of a devs of a (very) popular twitter 3rd party app who's learned the above the hard way. Unless you're in bed with ev, biz, or someone at betaworks you're more or less doomed.
ParadisePublish
· 4 months ago
Thanks for the eye-opening peek behind the curtain of Oz-twitterland. A cowardly lion, a tin man without a heart, and they scare and crow...
So which URL shortener can we trust? Ditto for photos?
I like the drive truck through big hole idea and wonder why someone doesn't create a Twitter Plus site that works the same but allows more than 140 so real urls can be used, etc. More is better!
Moksh Juneja
· 4 months ago
first it was Google which was the centre of the internet universe, now it is twitter. then there would be server problems - down, shut for maintenance, etc. Even Gmail which at leats i thought would be foolproof had issues #gfail became a trending topic on twitter itself. When Twitter was down twppl were discussing the same on the facebook.
Everyone product has their set of challenges, which they overcome. those are just products, my thoughts on this is it is not the product, but the bigger issue the individual who is using these platforms will get tired or bored of using these social media products. The problem is putting your lifestream online and someone misusing it.
Jonas Lejon
· 4 months ago
I've created the service TweetBackup.com to make sure all tweets gets archived. Your #1
barrkel
· 4 months ago
Dear me, I wish I could get rid of that annoying friend connect toolbar on the page bottom. My how it's annoying.
Dave Carpenter
· 4 months ago
"And last week I learned that there are tons of followers who just follow you to get you to follow back " No way, alert the press! "Last week" ? Tell me tongue's in cheek on that one Mr. Rock Star Web Guru.
Wayne Smallman
· 4 months ago
Twitter is a crippled, exceptionally weak and feature-lite service that survives on inertia alone.
Ask yourself this: if Twitter had just been released, with the likes of FriendFeed, Plurk and even Pownce (now gone), would you even give Twitter a second look? Of course not.
RickMeasham
· 4 months ago
In an effort to be 'first', I pointed out the problem with the URL shortening way back in early 2007 (no citation or link .. but I promise!).
The 'easy' solution is for Twitter to register some domain like twi.tr and provide their own shortening service. For backwards compatibility, and to 'rescue' those using tr.im, it's a relatively simple process to search/replace them. Then again, tweets were only ever meant to be ephemeral.
Alternately, don' t shorten, but only count URLs as 12 characters out of the 140 allowed.
BerislavLopac
· 4 months ago
The first issue up there is easily solved with www.sparrw.com
StephenPickering
· 4 months ago
I felt the same way about Flickr. When I hit 200 photos they said I had to pay to see my older photos. I was so mad, not because 25 bucks is too much, but the way they do it. When you sign up they don't tell you this. They make it seem the "pro" account is for being able to upload unlimited photos per month and other features. So after I went over 200 it popped up that my older photos were in effect held hostage. They should make clear on the sign up page this is what they do, but if they did would it had grown to be what it is? They trick people with this policy.
Mark
· 4 months ago
Very nice article on the failings of Twitter as a company. I would question though, whether any of this would actually effect the community as a whole? Would the casual user actually be affected by any of this enough to want to switch to another site?
Very interesting comments. I am learning a lot re the short URL business, etc.
That Sprrw lpols good. Will it work from an iPhone? Tweetake would not. Also will Sprrw back up contacts or only tweets?
Mark Evans
· 4 months ago
Robert,
For all the excitement about the cloud, the downside is you have limited control over your data. Of course, no one really thinks about until something like tr.im's demise happens.
As for Twitter's behaviour, it would be better if they were more transparent and fair but they're running a business, and sometimes business isn't fair. If people were pissed off enough they'd go to a competitor but few people have shown an inclination to do so. Maybe you should think about leading the way.
Mark
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
Mark: I have, but I've learned by watching Leo Laporte (who is responsible for getting a lot of the early adopters onto Twitter in the first place) that people don't move easily once they've started pouring their life into something. I don't think there's anything Twitter can do now to slow its growth. Me neither. :-)
EvaUlian
· 4 months ago
Good job I only put a picture of the mess I had in my shed on flicker- which they can keep with my blessings!
nommo
· 4 months ago
Stop developing for these fame/cash-crazed social media start-ups!
I was at #wordcampuk recently and kindof (long story) got into a 'conversation' with Matt Mullenweg about Buddypress.
We talked about the same thing at the core of this post & discussion - essentially social networks springing up that are all fluffy and lovely and 'for the people' in the first instance and then as soon as critical mass is reached, the founder suddenly gets all fiscally motivated, sells to google or newcorp or something and starts 'sharecropping' and basically behaving like a dick to those who helped build the wave.
As a social media user - I have always been hesitant for this reason (apart from the T&Cs that say - "all of your profiles belongs to us" of course). That's why you won't find all my kids photos on flickr - but *I* will find them on my 'gallery' install on my dreamhost account ;-)
Spend your precious development time on developing for open source networks! Simple! Don't chase the people who are chasing the money. Open is good for the human race. Greed will kill us all. The revolution will not be a start-up.
Make money from other stuff, but don't put your heart and soul into twitter, facebook, or any other 'social network' with shareholders.
ninjamonk
· 4 months ago
well also the search sucks too, why can't I find a tweet from 12 months ago or even a month ago?
I have been saying this for over a year and even mentioned it to twitter, they need paid support for developers so developers who make applications can pay and get a better level of service and support.
With the recent attack there was no offical responses on the google group on issues (they might of been busy but...)
I do love twitter and have a couple of apps etc but I do agree the developer relations need to be improved and made more professional.
Paul
· 4 months ago
You get what you see. When has Twitter ever promised to keep the banal postings of some of the most boring people in the world? Why would anyone want to see what was posted months ago? As to Follower numbers who cares? Only those people whose vanity leads them to worry about every extra follower. And if every tweet only has a life of a few hours (after which it loses its currency) then whether you use bit.ly or somethinbg else doesn't matter.
You're taking it far too seriously, or else you're trolling again.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
Paul, because SOME PEOPLE put a lot more than banal crap into Twitter. Some of us (here are my favorites: http://twitter.com/scobleizer/favorites ) use it to pass around URLs and other interesting news and information. I definitely want to be able to search that data store in the future (remind me again what Om Malik tweeted about Microsoft in January 2008 or show me the tweets I favorited from the Chinese Earthquake). The fact that you can't see any use isn't my problem, it's yours.
Lounger McKinney
· 4 months ago
Hello Robert... The risks of the cloud will always be with us. The days of the free lunch storage on the internet are over. For several years I used AOL HOMETOWN for free storage of my pictures. How stupid was eye. I figured AOL would be there for me forever. Then one day AOL sends email to my AOL email address ( only check that email once every two weeks or so ) saying, I have 30 days to remove all my pictures or they will be gone forever. Oh well, what a drag, moving several thousand pictures in two weeks was a task. Would have been a decent good will gesture to give members at least 90 days, whatever. I decided to use smugmug.com after watching the video report you produced about their operation and the owners. Smugmug has three levels of paid membership which I feel are fair priced for unlimited service. The most important feature is that Smugmug is a well funded family operation that will be around a very long time. Always best to be on alert for the quick buck startup artists. In the end they all will put the screws to their users for the gaud almighty dollar Squeeze it easy... Lounger
Joe Longström
· 4 months ago
Well if you are really concerned about access to your tweets, you could use identi.ca. This does not have to be exclusively. You can just mirror your Twitter tweets to identi.ca.
Brian Duffy
· 4 months ago
I think that the conclusion here is that Twitter isn't a platform with legs. A platform has to be relatively neutral to be effective. Twitter sounds like a private club that doesn't have it's eye on the ball, and whose platform could be rendered irrelevant in days my Microsoft, Yahoo or Google.
Microsoft Twitter would have a hundred million Hotmail users on day 1.
Ericson Smith
· 4 months ago
You could start by also switching from Disqus and keeping comments on your site. Why? Well,
1. When Disqus goes down (or out of business), so go your comments,
2. The search engines can't see the comments attached to your post -- this one is important, because so many times in the past months i've found comments that are just as valuable as adjuncts to the post.
#2 is probably the most important reason.
moon
· 4 months ago
Isn't this what Marc canter said about Twitter two years ago?
Nambu is a Social Messaging Trainwreck and the only way they can come-up with to make money from Twitter is a tr.im extortion play
Herschel
· 4 months ago
Are you kidding us Robert? You are mad at Flickr because you lapsed your pro account and can't get to pictures that apparently you don't have a copy of anywhere else?
You must also be kidding us in that you don't realize that these Internet companies can't be trusted. They can't be trusted because their growth model is so messed up in that they have to grow fast, get a lot of users, get a lot of hype and get more funding. Very few Internet software products have a sustainable revenue/expense model and will, eventually, go out of business.
On one of the comments here it was stated that cloud computing wasn't trustworthy. I think from the very few top tier software companies such as Google, MSFT and Amazon you can trust their business models in that they will be here for the long run. HOWEVER, in case they have a melt down YOU ALWAYS NEED TO TRUST YOURSELF. Keep your own backups.
That is why I have 4TB on the floor in a six inch by six inch USB external drive array. I don't even trust myself - everything is in three locations at least.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
You are an idiot. I have about 10,000 photos. Even if I had them all on hard drives around my house, tell me again how I search them as easily as I can search Flickr? On Flickr everything has been tagged (not just by me, either!). Everything has a headline. Everything has a description. And my AUDIENCE has put comments on lots of the photos which makes them easier to search. The same photos on Flickr are 100x more searchable than the ones on my hard drives (and that is if I can figure out which damn hard drive the images are on). Geesh.
Apostol Apostolov
· 4 months ago
Scoble, learn to use social networks and third-party tools responsibly. No social network or web service can be fully trusted with important information forever and for free. Luckily people have created the means to export all you have on Flickr along with tags, descriptions, everything. Such tools exist for Facebook as well, including exporting all photos that you've been tagged on, not just those you have downloaded. Alas, it is too late for such advice but you will know better how to deal with valuable information online. I used to lose accounts on several places, and now I usee exporters and downloaders in order to keep as big contact list and media vault as possible.
Paul
· 4 months ago
Robert, Maybe you're the idiot. I used to think that you had something useful to say but no more. Your response/attitude to Herschel is just downright rude. He has a valid point. How can you possibly communicate in this way with people who have a valid point?
10,000 photos is nothing. I have MUCH more than that and I can find exactly what I want when I want. I agree with him totally. You back up everything multiple times yourself and even have an offsite back-up. To use Flickr as your primary is just plain mad.
Don't bother replying because I won't be back.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
My response to Herschel WAS rude and it was because he was so wrong it isn't even funny. So are you. Come over to my house and find the baby pictures I took of Milan. I already have them all backed up on some hard drive somewhere. But I can go to Flickr (now that I've paid again for my pro account) and search for them and find them in SECONDS. You CAN NOT DO THAT ON YOUR OWN FREAKING HARD DRIVE!!! Why? Because all my file names are DSC001 or something like that. This is why I get rude. Flickr is useful BECAUSE OF THE METADATA THAT PEOPLE PUT ONTO MY PHOTOS!!! It is clear that YOU have nothing useful to say here either, so why don't you stay out of it, please? Thanks.
Ken Kennedy
· 4 months ago
Robert,
At the risk of getting in the middle of what is obviously pretty personal for you here, I'd suggest you're conflating two different issues with Twitter and Flickr. I'm there with ya on the Twitter thing...in particular, since the "I Want Sandy" shutdown fiasco, I've been VERY leery of trusting the management team at Twitter to keep the users/developers interests in mind...well, at all, much less as a priority. Twitter is a crummily necessary evil at this point, in my mind. I'll be happy to move on when I can.
The Flickr situation sounds different, however. I can only imagine your frustration at not being able to get at your photos for a couple of days...but didn't the renewal of the Pro account take care of that? They didn't delete the photos...they became unavailable. It's very clear when you purchase a Pro account how things will work, and yes, you're committing to a long-term financial relationship with Flickr, for $25/year. But IMO, it's a great value (I have a pro account as well)...any service providing that level of storage, accessibility (via powerful search), collaboration tools (for allowing others to tag, etc.), is worth $25 bucks a year to me. And Flickr, unlike Twitter, hasn't stabbed me in the back (yet *grin*).
So I feel your pain, but I'm thinking that comparing the two is doing a disservice to Flickr, honestly.
jufemaiz
· 4 months ago
Agreed.
Flickr's ToS is fairly obvious about the fact that if your pro account isn't up to date you aren't able to dive into your archives using their API. The links still work. The images and pages are still there, but they're not linked nor shown in results using the API (either them internally or the externally facing one).
The plus side is that they *do not* destroy those assets that you've uploaded, nor the additional meta. They just remove it from viewing.
Consider it like not being allowed on the road until you pay your registration and other requirements (eg: insurance in some countries).
As always, it pays to read your ToS when signing up to any account.
ekivemark
· 4 months ago
The network effects are one challenge. They keep pulling us back to Twitter. But it does drive home the fact that "Free is too high a price to pay" for some services.
A.) What if the short URL companies offered two additional features:
1. As a premium feature let customers use domains, which they already own as the base domain for the short URL. For example, instead of bit.ly producing a short URL such as:
2. Short URL companies opened up "the walled garden" by offering an export option. The export would include the short URL with your domain, which wouldn't need to change even if it were imported into another service and the destination URL, which should also remain the same.
You already own your domain and with a simple export file you then own the data. It shouldn't be too hard for a new company to create an import feature which would "relink" the short URL with the destination URL.
Now you have peace of mind. As with most of these issues, the key variable is the the web services is built using a domain which you already own.
The short URL companies could partner with domain registrar's and create a new revenue stream by selling domains to people.
B.) Twitter, itself, were to create a new domain, such as .twt. Based on what Jason Calacanis said on TWiT, I would not be surprised to see Twitter try to either create or buy a domain for itself.
As Jason hypothesized, Twitter wants to become the phone book of the internet. In order to do that each users needs to have a unique identifier. Your telephone number served that function, obviously, in the "old world."
However, users of Twitter are going to be very suspect and reticent to use Twitter's own domain as their unique identifier. For the very reasons Robert highlights in this post, such trust by users would be foolish.
Therefore, the only true solution would be for user's to own their unique identifier (i.e. domain). Twitter would be smart to become a registrar as soon as possible or at least do a deal with the folks that own the .tel domain.
fredweimer
· 4 months ago
A friend of mine just started a new twitter account. I was with him, and when he went into his new account he was following 50 people. I was shocked at this. I told him you're supposed to choose who you follow. Not be automatically following people twitter deems followable.
n8k99
· 4 months ago
There are a couple of different themes which seem to be highlighted within this post. First, is that we are increasingly dedicating our computer usage locally to accessing data that is stored elsewhere by someone else. Perhaps someone might be inclined to see the issues you have pointed out as reasons to criticize these practices, however I think you are right in that when we put data on the cloud we need to store in multiple place- ourselves. Secondly, this is a continuation of the critique of twitter from last year, prior to their incorporation of the Suggested User list or the mytical back room partnerships that have taken place. There has ben movement afoot to reproduce the functions and connectivity offerred by the service but in a more open and modular manner. I am certain that Dave is working in the right direction to make this a simple thing, for if just doing it equally were enough there would be a great deal of buzzhype about laconi.ca. Thirdly, this is a problem that is excerbated by the service sliding into the mainstream of our culture. By becoming a central hotspot that can be hyped up on CNN, Fox, ABC, NY Times etc, this is reflective of the same manner in which AOL was adopted in the 90s. So Twitter itself will be around despite not having monetized itself as long as it can keep its media darling status, but once it purchases Time-Warner or some other obviously ridiculous business decision, the trumpeting press will see some downside, and there will be a graceful exit from the room to the next little tech service that captures their attention.
If Twitter doesn't want to lose the rest of its credibility as a platform for third parties to build upon, they need to become vendor-agnostic quickly.
Endorsing certain companies and people just doesn't go well together with building a platform for the whole world. Imagine Tim Berners Lee would have only allowed Compaq machines to access the web. We wouldn't have a prospering world-wide web today.
candrewswpi
· 4 months ago
You've outlines many of the reasons why I use identi.ca instead of Twitter. For example, Identi.ca default URL shortening service is ur1.ca. Right on the front page at http://ur1.ca, you can download the database - no questions asked. So if ur1.ca dies... all the data at least is still available. The same kind of thing applies to the rest of the identi.ca sphere - the code is all open, and the database (with passwords and other private information removed, of course) is available upon request. Unlike Twitter, identi.ca's database and software will *never* go away, it's not possible.
Lisa Black
· 4 months ago
What does TeamTwitter need to do to take all of us back to that honeymoon period -- you know the first two weeks in the relationship where everything is bliss?
Great article, but it gives me the blues. I felt about Twitter how I still feel about Apple...but if they're going to play God with content, better forewarned.
Scobleizer
· 4 months ago
Well, how can Twitter get the geeks to love it?
1. Fix the technology so it works. Search doesn't work. Try finding a Tweet from the Chinese Earthquake. It's not there. APIs seem to always be the first thing that goes down. 2. Get rid of stupid limits and/or make the limits that are there consistent and disclosed. 3. Get rid of favoritism, both on the business side, as well as the personal side. Or, at least, make it transparent. Explain why TechCrunch, GigaOm, and Mashable are on the Suggested User List but Leo Laporte isn't. Same for brands. Why is Seesmic on the home page right now and others aren't. 4. Communicate proactively with developers. Explain ahead of time when APIs will change, not afterward. 5. When your service is down, don't have your head of platform Tweet that he's eating sushi and having a beer (that one happened on Friday, believe it or not). 6. Get a PR firm and have nice people who regularly reach out to developers, press, bloggers, and take any crap that comes their way when problems happen, like when CTOs get kicked off and start bitching about not being able to get help (that happened this last weekend too). 7. Stop kicking people off willy nilly. Stop putting in effect stupid rules for both developers and users. Oh, wait, Facebook does that too and they have 250 million users. Sigh.
Anyway, that's some examples. I doubt Twitter will do any of them and I would bet a significant amount of money that Twitter will go on to make a HUGE amount of money anyway, even if it ignores this advice. Sigh.
ianbetteridge
· 4 months ago
Why should Twitter care if geeks love it? With god knows how many million users, it's gone way beyond the point when early adopters can affect it.
jufemaiz
· 4 months ago
Of course the API is the first thing to go down. It's "hobbled mode" - when the servers are under severe strain you reduce the non-priority tasks.
Flickr does this (talk to John Allspaw about this one).
The electricity industry does this ("load shedding" of non-essential load from in order of increasing priority to maintain connectivity).
Both in real time.
Both to prevent the undesirable consequence of failure and a black start.
Paul Carpenter
· 4 months ago
I so totally agree with this it's beyond parody.
The good news is that Twitter isn't likely to be with us for long. If the Dancing Hamster had functionality, you'd have had Twitter.
YouPage @youpage
· 4 months ago
Great post and refreshingly objective. In this case I don't see why they can't just include an additional text box for links a la YouPage. Here at YouPage we have taken this approach which means the main message text box is used for it's communication primary purpose
Has anyone seriously considered buying tr.im? I mean, what sort of "token sum" are they talking about.
I would love to buy tr.im and monetize it, get the stats back up, and make a long-term commitment to loyal fans.
Integrating this with an app that stores tweets back past thousands might be nice too ;)
I seriously think that tr.im was just not well prepared with a business plan for monetizing it ... I've thought about this a lot over the last 24 hours, and have found several monetizing plans for a URL shortener, so I'm not sure what happened with tr.im.
Almost seems as if he thought he could sell the system to someone, but forgot that people want to buy something that makes money, not something that is designed to eat the money.
"These are mostly fake followers cause they only cared about bumping up their follower numbers, not in listening to anything you had to say (which is provable because if they had listened to me over the years they would have joined FriendFeed cause I’ve talked about that so much..."
Just because I don't want to be your friend on FriendFeed, Scoble, doesn't mean I don't listen to you :)
Ami
· 4 months ago
Surprised no one has mentioned Magnolia (ma.gnolia) social bookmarking service that had a massive data loss. They lost all my bookmarks.
I'm not defending Twitter, they are clearly experiencing some growth pains and if you read the TechCrunch materials some of the conversations were pretty "out there" in terms of strategy and tactical execution. But, if you look back over the years at "third party developer programs" and relationships (ne Sun, Autodesk, Apple, etc.) there were a lot of rocky times for third party developers. The trade off is you get to jump in a tide that is rising quickly; but, it ain't easy and it won't be over until the fat lady sings the blues and someone buys them. And, then you'll see another wrinkle in their API/Developer relationship. Pete Townsend said it first ......"meet the new boss, same as the old boss!"
josephgelb
· 4 months ago
It seems like Twitter is a lot like Google in that it tries to vibe out on its thing but is pretty tied to a political game. That sounds like a tipping point that could hurt the company.
Taxman45
· 4 months ago
I was able to scroll back to 2/12/08 on tweetree.com. Have you tried that?
Ecommerce
· 4 months ago
Nice post, thanks for updating all the informations. Still now i didn't use Twitter but i am thinking of using it.
All Comments
Back up your pics, docs, files onto an external hard drive in your home and its up to you to police it, look after it, you are in total control and so if for any reason you then lost it all, its your fault and not someone elses.
As we have witnessed these last few days, servers can be brought down, whole sites and apps brought down, and not one of us had any control over what was occuring Robert!
As you have learned with Flickr (and which incidentally applies to others as well) it is foolhardy to put anything anywhere that is completely controlled by others.
Well, that's this Granny's view anyway for what its worth. Remember that old saying 'don't put all your eggs into one basket'
TG
I know Microsoft is headed in this direction with Live Mesh, and if Picasas folder sync feature is any evidence I'd say Google is too.
Very few people have the discipline to migrate their archives to the latest technology as they upgrade their systems. I personally have lived through several storage media format changes: mag tape, floppies, SCSI drive, etc. Due to laziness, most of the files stored on these media did not survive the transition.
People forget their home is also a single point of failure. Theft, earthquake, leaky roof could wipe out your entire archive.
I suggest doing both: putting content up in the cloud and storing it locally. It is cheap and getting easier synchronize both every day.
I'll plug Smugmug for photos, Google / Yahoo for email, and Amazon for blobs.
a dollar and he could afford a Time Machine 2Gb.
good rant.
OR MAYBE AM JUST CRAZY ...
Twitter and the "Tweety-bird" are evocative to some extent of what Twitter is all about, hence the mass proliferation of an entire Twitter/Tweet lingo, tons of new 3rd party app names, etc.
AnthonyF.
Solacetech-IT Professional
http://myphillynetwork.com
http://twitter.com/myphillynetwork
We all think you're awfully cute, Robert, but we also have a brain and free will.
The simple fact that a follower doesn't click on a link doesn't mean that they are worthless. It may be that the particular link just doesn't interest them or that they don't have the time to act right then when they see it. This doesn't mean that something else wont interest or they wouldn't have acted if they had the time. The real power of having influence is connecting people to brands that add value to their lives and the true measure of this is not clicks but conversions. If you or anyone else is going to be valuable to a brand you will need to be able to impact conversions and this will likely take place in both visible and trackable ways (tracked clicks moving through the conversion process) as well as, unseen ways (actions taken because you influence them through your communications and alliances).
Good blog post.
Your concerns are just and maybe that's also why they don't feature a history of your twitter items. Which is strange to say the least, as the other things you point out.
Twitter also gives you the choice to use it your way, which made it a fast growing thing. I for one have only followed the people I think are interesting and have something to add to my world. The followers that only want to have me follow them back are only adding to my follower count, which in fact doesn't say that much.
On the other hand; like anything in the world, nothing lasts forever, but with the digital age you sure have more possibilities to keep data for a more extended period of time.
2) Twitter has played fast and loose with what they want to be when they grow up. They are growing like a weed, but what do you do with weeds? You pluck them out. What we've seen happen with Twitter as it moved from toy to infrastructure is that they turned their backs on Silicon Valley and wanted to go Hollywood. They did, but they forgot to invest in a network and server architecture to let them meet their full potential.
3) The issues with developers are dramatically poor. The Google Group discussions with developers have been a start, but this entire weekend, following the DDOS attack, the group has been under the care of a part-time guy who just came to the company a short while ago, not one of their known vets. And Twitter lets the developers learn, after the fact, that something has changed, without warning.
4) I don't care so much about the URL shortener game. I know that thanks to Twitter not letting search be true search, my old tweets are almost impossible to find. I used tr.im for a side project, but have been using bit.ly more, thanks to stats. And yes, FriendFeed uses ff.im, but I trust those guys to invest in keeping it up, even if FriendFeed shut down some day.
5) Change doesn't happen overnight. It's likely you'll look back on this post in months or a year, and laugh about how you were wrong and Twitter won anyway. It sucks when the guys who possibly didn't deserve it and didn't treat their community right end up winning anyway. But simple is defeating quality right now.
I have a long track record of agreeing with 95% of all your commentary, and often get knocked for our overlap. That we disagree on some things and talk about them publicly is part of the fun of blogging and social networking. You can trust what I write.
I think the celebrities "today" are locked up. I wouldn't see Oprah's use of Twitter as a success, and I wouldn't see Trent Reznor leaving Twitter as a success - or Kanye West saying other people tweet on his behalf (like Britney does openly). There is some serious real adoption to go before saying the battle is over.
What would be much more plausible to me is a situation where one of Google's services shuts down but they allow you to export your history from that service (Google Reader Shared Items, for example) to another. If FriendFeed were to fold, someone else with resources would have to take over the ff.im portion since there is no parent company running FriendFeed.
Your point #4 doesn't exactly make a point. You say you don't care about the URL shortener game and go on to mention search, but then flip back to URL shorteners by discussing which ones you do and don't use. What exactly is the message?
I don't care so much about the old links I have put into Twitter because Twitter can't let people easily find them. I mentioned specifically tr.im and bit.ly to illustrate how I had not chosen one for all my activity, and even with the recent news, am not "impacted" much by tr.im going away. The message is that Twitter has a lot of growing up to do in the search and discovery and records retention department before we can rely on any of it.
I sent Biz several emails about it, without any reply. He used to reply to other mails...
It is a shame that Twitter is already displaying some of the same signs of big co. arrogance that MSFT and more recently Apple (see Jason Calacanis' current post/email) are tending towards. Before Twitter ever having earned a dime no less...
Just wrote this today as a footnote to Jason's post:
"... am musing about the question of whether all large/successful companies (in this case a post-1997 resurgent Apple riding the wave of their iPod and iPhone dominance) are more or less "doomed" to live out "The Powerbroker" archetype, becoming paranoid/controlling, throwing their proverbial weight around, and beginning to bully all and sundry.
Maybe I have been a little too harsh in judging Microsoft in the past, maybe these developments are psychologically... almost unavoidable...?!?"
http://www.davidbanes.com/
David.
Two points I would like to make.
Firstly, I agree it's total bullcrap that Twitter uses a network of 'friends' rather then the best providers, when looking for partners and that awful SUL. It's too open to manipulation and causes distrust.
Secondly, outsourcing ANY third party provider to store 'your stuff' takes a huge leap of faith. I see you are using DisQus for your comments. Let's hope for your sake it stays in business and is reliable, or your outsourced comments might go missing! This is not a pop at DisCus (a good service) - It's just open to all the same problems, as the URL shortners you mentioned in your post.
Nice post Robert.
Jim
I thought when you removed discus, you were left with all the comments made direct to the blog - but NOT those it pulled in from other platforms; like friendfeed / twitter etc. As some of the comments left here on the blog refer to comments left on other platforms, retaining only those that were made here on the blog would make the comments look disjointed.
Sorry if I misunderstood, but that's what I have previously thought.
Jim
That's sums it up. And I know what I'm talking about, I'm one of a devs of a (very) popular twitter 3rd party app who's learned the above the hard way. Unless you're in bed with ev, biz, or someone at betaworks you're more or less doomed.
So which URL shortener can we trust? Ditto for photos?
I like the drive truck through big hole idea and wonder why someone doesn't create a Twitter Plus site that works the same but allows more than 140 so real urls can be used, etc. More is better!
Everyone product has their set of challenges, which they overcome. those are just products, my thoughts on this is it is not the product, but the bigger issue the individual who is using these platforms will get tired or bored of using these social media products. The problem is putting your lifestream online and someone misusing it.
No way, alert the press!
"Last week" ?
Tell me tongue's in cheek on that one Mr. Rock Star Web Guru.
Ask yourself this: if Twitter had just been released, with the likes of FriendFeed, Plurk and even Pownce (now gone), would you even give Twitter a second look? Of course not.
The 'easy' solution is for Twitter to register some domain like twi.tr and provide their own shortening service. For backwards compatibility, and to 'rescue' those using tr.im, it's a relatively simple process to search/replace them. Then again, tweets were only ever meant to be ephemeral.
Alternately, don' t shorten, but only count URLs as 12 characters out of the 140 allowed.
This other article does well, though humorous, to point out the shortcomings of Twitter as a philosophy: http://www.fuckingmanly.com/articles/twitter-no.... Warning: contains swearing.
learning a lot re the short URL business, etc.
That Sprrw lpols good. Will it work from an iPhone? Tweetake would not. Also will Sprrw back up contacts or only tweets?
For all the excitement about the cloud, the downside is you have limited control over your data. Of course, no one really thinks about until something like tr.im's demise happens.
As for Twitter's behaviour, it would be better if they were more transparent and fair but they're running a business, and sometimes business isn't fair. If people were pissed off enough they'd go to a competitor but few people have shown an inclination to do so. Maybe you should think about leading the way.
Mark
I was at #wordcampuk recently and kindof (long story) got into a 'conversation' with Matt Mullenweg about Buddypress.
We talked about the same thing at the core of this post & discussion - essentially social networks springing up that are all fluffy and lovely and 'for the people' in the first instance and then as soon as critical mass is reached, the founder suddenly gets all fiscally motivated, sells to google or newcorp or something and starts 'sharecropping' and basically behaving like a dick to those who helped build the wave.
As a social media user - I have always been hesitant for this reason (apart from the T&Cs that say - "all of your profiles belongs to us" of course). That's why you won't find all my kids photos on flickr - but *I* will find them on my 'gallery' install on my dreamhost account ;-)
Spend your precious development time on developing for open source networks! Simple! Don't chase the people who are chasing the money. Open is good for the human race. Greed will kill us all. The revolution will not be a start-up.
Make money from other stuff, but don't put your heart and soul into twitter, facebook, or any other 'social network' with shareholders.
Being able to get all your tweets out is coming http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/det...
for future features look at this http://apiwiki.twitter.com/V2-Roadmap
I have been saying this for over a year and even mentioned it to twitter, they need paid support for developers so developers who make applications can pay and get a better level of service and support.
With the recent attack there was no offical responses on the google group on issues (they might of been busy but...)
I do love twitter and have a couple of apps etc but I do agree the developer relations need to be improved and made more professional.
When has Twitter ever promised to keep the banal postings of some of the most boring people in the world?
Why would anyone want to see what was posted months ago?
As to Follower numbers who cares? Only those people whose vanity leads them to worry about every extra follower.
And if every tweet only has a life of a few hours (after which it loses its currency) then whether you use bit.ly or somethinbg else doesn't matter.
You're taking it far too seriously, or else you're trolling again.
I decided to use smugmug.com after watching the video report you produced about their operation and the owners. Smugmug has three levels of paid membership which I feel are fair priced for unlimited service. The most important feature is that Smugmug is a well funded family operation that will be around a very long time.
Always best to be on alert for the quick buck startup artists. In the end they all will put the screws to their users for the gaud almighty dollar
Squeeze it easy... Lounger
Microsoft Twitter would have a hundred million Hotmail users on day 1.
1. When Disqus goes down (or out of business), so go your comments,
2. The search engines can't see the comments attached to your post -- this one is important, because so many times in the past months i've found comments that are just as valuable as adjuncts to the post.
#2 is probably the most important reason.
Nambu is a Social Messaging Trainwreck and the only way they can come-up with to make money from Twitter is a tr.im extortion play
You must also be kidding us in that you don't realize that these Internet companies can't be trusted. They can't be trusted because their growth model is so messed up in that they have to grow fast, get a lot of users, get a lot of hype and get more funding. Very few Internet software products have a sustainable revenue/expense model and will, eventually, go out of business.
On one of the comments here it was stated that cloud computing wasn't trustworthy. I think from the very few top tier software companies such as Google, MSFT and Amazon you can trust their business models in that they will be here for the long run. HOWEVER, in case they have a melt down YOU ALWAYS NEED TO TRUST YOURSELF. Keep your own backups.
That is why I have 4TB on the floor in a six inch by six inch USB external drive array. I don't even trust myself - everything is in three locations at least.
Maybe you're the idiot.
I used to think that you had something useful to say but no more.
Your response/attitude to Herschel is just downright rude.
He has a valid point.
How can you possibly communicate in this way with people who have a valid point?
10,000 photos is nothing. I have MUCH more than that and I can find exactly what I want when I want.
I agree with him totally. You back up everything multiple times yourself and even have an offsite back-up. To use Flickr as your primary is just plain mad.
Don't bother replying because I won't be back.
At the risk of getting in the middle of what is obviously pretty personal for you here, I'd suggest you're conflating two different issues with Twitter and Flickr. I'm there with ya on the Twitter thing...in particular, since the "I Want Sandy" shutdown fiasco, I've been VERY leery of trusting the management team at Twitter to keep the users/developers interests in mind...well, at all, much less as a priority. Twitter is a crummily necessary evil at this point, in my mind. I'll be happy to move on when I can.
The Flickr situation sounds different, however. I can only imagine your frustration at not being able to get at your photos for a couple of days...but didn't the renewal of the Pro account take care of that? They didn't delete the photos...they became unavailable. It's very clear when you purchase a Pro account how things will work, and yes, you're committing to a long-term financial relationship with Flickr, for $25/year. But IMO, it's a great value (I have a pro account as well)...any service providing that level of storage, accessibility (via powerful search), collaboration tools (for allowing others to tag, etc.), is worth $25 bucks a year to me. And Flickr, unlike Twitter, hasn't stabbed me in the back (yet *grin*).
So I feel your pain, but I'm thinking that comparing the two is doing a disservice to Flickr, honestly.
Flickr's ToS is fairly obvious about the fact that if your pro account isn't up to date you aren't able to dive into your archives using their API. The links still work. The images and pages are still there, but they're not linked nor shown in results using the API (either them internally or the externally facing one).
The plus side is that they *do not* destroy those assets that you've uploaded, nor the additional meta. They just remove it from viewing.
Consider it like not being allowed on the road until you pay your registration and other requirements (eg: insurance in some countries).
As always, it pays to read your ToS when signing up to any account.
http://ekive.blogspot.com/2009/08/free-is-just-...
A.) What if the short URL companies offered two additional features:
1. As a premium feature let customers use domains, which they already own as the base domain for the short URL. For example, instead of bit.ly producing a short URL such as:
http://bit.ly/hksl
you were able to substitue the based domain (bit.ly) with your own domain (scobleizer.com)?
http://scobleizer.com/hksl
2. Short URL companies opened up "the walled garden" by offering an export option. The export would include the short URL with your domain, which wouldn't need to change even if it were imported into another service and the destination URL, which should also remain the same.
You already own your domain and with a simple export file you then own the data. It shouldn't be too hard for a new company to create an import feature which would "relink" the short URL with the destination URL.
Now you have peace of mind. As with most of these issues, the key variable is the the web services is built using a domain which you already own.
The short URL companies could partner with domain registrar's and create a new revenue stream by selling domains to people.
B.) Twitter, itself, were to create a new domain, such as .twt. Based on what Jason Calacanis said on TWiT, I would not be surprised to see Twitter try to either create or buy a domain for itself.
Were this to happen, users would have the option of keeping their standard http://twitter.com/scobleizer username or they could purchase their very own domain, such as http://scobleizer.twt
As Jason hypothesized, Twitter wants to become the phone book of the internet. In order to do that each users needs to have a unique identifier. Your telephone number served that function, obviously, in the "old world."
However, users of Twitter are going to be very suspect and reticent to use Twitter's own domain as their unique identifier. For the very reasons Robert highlights in this post, such trust by users would be foolish.
Therefore, the only true solution would be for user's to own their unique identifier (i.e. domain). Twitter would be smart to become a registrar as soon as possible or at least do a deal with the folks that own the .tel domain.
See also my comment on tr.im's site:
http://blog.tr.im/post/159369789/tr-im-r-i-p?ds...
If Twitter doesn't want to lose the rest of its credibility as a platform for third parties to build upon, they need to become vendor-agnostic quickly.
Endorsing certain companies and people just doesn't go well together with building a platform for the whole world. Imagine Tim Berners Lee would have only allowed Compaq machines to access the web. We wouldn't have a prospering world-wide web today.
Great article, but it gives me the blues. I felt about Twitter how I still feel about Apple...but if they're going to play God with content, better forewarned.
1. Fix the technology so it works. Search doesn't work. Try finding a Tweet from the Chinese Earthquake. It's not there. APIs seem to always be the first thing that goes down.
2. Get rid of stupid limits and/or make the limits that are there consistent and disclosed.
3. Get rid of favoritism, both on the business side, as well as the personal side. Or, at least, make it transparent. Explain why TechCrunch, GigaOm, and Mashable are on the Suggested User List but Leo Laporte isn't. Same for brands. Why is Seesmic on the home page right now and others aren't.
4. Communicate proactively with developers. Explain ahead of time when APIs will change, not afterward.
5. When your service is down, don't have your head of platform Tweet that he's eating sushi and having a beer (that one happened on Friday, believe it or not).
6. Get a PR firm and have nice people who regularly reach out to developers, press, bloggers, and take any crap that comes their way when problems happen, like when CTOs get kicked off and start bitching about not being able to get help (that happened this last weekend too).
7. Stop kicking people off willy nilly. Stop putting in effect stupid rules for both developers and users. Oh, wait, Facebook does that too and they have 250 million users. Sigh.
Anyway, that's some examples. I doubt Twitter will do any of them and I would bet a significant amount of money that Twitter will go on to make a HUGE amount of money anyway, even if it ignores this advice. Sigh.
Flickr does this (talk to John Allspaw about this one).
The electricity industry does this ("load shedding" of non-essential load from in order of increasing priority to maintain connectivity).
Both in real time.
Both to prevent the undesirable consequence of failure and a black start.
The good news is that Twitter isn't likely to be with us for long. If the Dancing Hamster had functionality, you'd have had Twitter.
@YouPage
I would love to buy tr.im and monetize it, get the stats back up, and make a long-term commitment to loyal fans.
Integrating this with an app that stores tweets back past thousands might be nice too ;)
I seriously think that tr.im was just not well prepared with a business plan for monetizing it ... I've thought about this a lot over the last 24 hours, and have found several monetizing plans for a URL shortener, so I'm not sure what happened with tr.im.
Almost seems as if he thought he could sell the system to someone, but forgot that people want to buy something that makes money, not something that is designed to eat the money.
Just because I don't want to be your friend on FriendFeed, Scoble, doesn't mean I don't listen to you :)
http://mashable.com/2009/01/30/magnolia-data-loss/