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Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#61

Post by 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.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#62

Post by cookiecaper »

Twitter is overrated, first of all. Secondly, I don't think we can say they've succeeded. They are the new hotness and probably will be for a couple more years, but they aren't profitable and their only money comes from investors enamored with the idea. They're just riding the hype train and soon it will be their stop.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#64

Post by nazgulnarsil »

cmurphycode wrote: post #44
gojomo wrote: post #22

From: http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html Twitter is important because it’s a new protocol. Fundamentally it’s a messaging protocol where you don’t specify the recipients. It’s really more of a discovery than an invention; that square was always there in the periodic table of protocols, but no one had quite hit it squarely. We could try to draw a small excerpt of this 'periodic table': LONG SHORT ONE:ONE email im/sms ON…

You're right about Twitter hitting the missing square in the periodic table. I think you glaze over the importance of the short nature of Twitter, though. Yes, you can write arbitrarily short blog posts. But you don't, because you feel like you have an obligation to make your official blog be a well written, safe-for-future-eyes snapshot of your personality. Most of us have started a blog with grand intentions and gi…

"It takes a special sort of daring to provide a product that does so little."

I'm hanging on to this one. :)

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#65

Post by sid »

zmmmmm wrote: post #55

I honestly think people often forget the reasons things succeed in the beginning and replace them with the reasons they are successful now. You know the main reason I think Twitter was successful? They had an SMS gateway. I knew loads of people who never sat in front of a computer except for a few minutes a day at best. It's easy for us constantly-connected internet geeks to forget how the rest of the world lives. Th…

Yes i agree with this. And i think should they have come in a little later they would have missed the boat so in this regard they are lucky. In terms of how they have maintained and grew twitter to what it is now, that is skill.

If connection to the internet on mobile phones was mainstream at the time twitter started the SMS gateway would have been redundant just as it is right now.

I know alot of people who use twitter now and im pretty sure none of them know you can tweet via an SMS as most of them have twitter apps installed on their mobiles.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#66

Post by AlexMuir »

I think one of the biggest reasons for Twitter's success has been the users it attracts (in chronological order):

1. Geeks - were not put off by 140char limit, abstract usernames, @-syntax, and appreciated the openness of the API. Blogs like Techcrunch loved it because it is an extra distribution channel for their content = Huge media coverage in the tech media.

2. Celebrities/Media - It's ideally suited for this - in fact it could have been launched as a stand-alone product for celebs to communicate with their audience. Because celebrities were using it = heavy coverage in the mainstream media.

3. Social media types - because of the media coverage, and the usage of the above two groups, social media people began trumpeting that Twitter was/is something special = business taking an interest.

4. The rest of the world - I don't think we're at this stage, and I don't think we will be. It seems to me that most people use twitter to push their content - they aren't really engaged in a conversation, and following someone really means nothing. I don't know any 'normal' people who use Twitter. Every person I know uses Facebook.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#67

Post by iampims »

azeemazhar2 wrote: post #30
tomwalker wrote: post #14

Can I ask another question: Is twitter profitable yet? Has it a roadmap to profitability?

Twitter has 170 employees. Assuming fully loaded cost of 150 k that is approximate $ 30 mill pee annum The google and bing deals are worth 50mill leaving 20mill to cover other costs like iron and bandwidth. My sense is clearly profitable. A

According to their "Team list" on Twitter they have 241 employees (http://twitter.com/twitter/team)

Re: Ask HN: Why did Twitter succeed?

#69

Post by emehrkay »

I always felt that it was pushed and pushed by tech blogs as the next big thing, until it did become the next big thing. I opened an account in 07, I believe, and never really used it, but heard over and over again how important it was from sites like techcrunch. That and the fact that they allowed anyone to build on top of it
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