I’m surprised Twitter didn’t add stories into Periscope
Farewell, Periscope
31–40 of 80 posts
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't they pick a better name? Fleet is some kind of enema.
It's a fair point. The enema company was the 2nd-4th entry everywhere except google's search product and Twitter didn't make the first page (again, except on goog). The only time I've heard fleet used outside the enema context is when specifically talking about a group of vehicles. Fleet and fleeting don't really have much overlap in terms of definition. Presumably Twitter was going for the latter meaning, but went w…
Right, and they probably thought it was clever since it rhymes with tweet.
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#33Re: Farewell, Periscope
#34For a moment, I was wondering if this was the amazing Periscope DOS debugger that had somehow lived on (it's not). Anyway, this is the best link I could find about it: https://books.google.com/books?id=-j4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=P...
I was wondering how that amazing debugger that hooked to the NMI pin of a PC made its way into a Mobile App... different thing poaching the name.
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a fair point. The enema company was the 2nd-4th entry everywhere except google's search product and Twitter didn't make the first page (again, except on goog). The only time I've heard fleet used outside the enema context is when specifically talking about a group of vehicles. Fleet and fleeting don't really have much overlap in terms of definition. Presumably Twitter was going for the latter meaning, but went w…
Right, and they probably thought it was clever since it rhymes with tweet.
It's a fleeting tweet.
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#36This, I suppose, is unexpected. It reflects a similar fate of a lot of technology plays that grew fast. I would like to reflect however on this comment in the article -- "The truth is that the Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time."…
> If you are an engineer and you start moving up into senior leadership roles, understand that this is your job
Product wants new features and new products, and they want them now. Sales wants new features and new products, and they want them yesterday. Finance people want everything to be cheap, but since most engineers have no idea how to prove to them with actual hard data that it's cheaper in the long run ship features more carefully and slowly, and build things with reliability and robustness in mind, finance people go in the opposite direction and think that hiring inexperienced developers from the cheapest places on the planet is the way to go, because "cost of R&D per head" is a very easy number to quantify.
Unfortunately very few companies have an engineering department that can overrule all of product, sales, and finance. In general even one of those three being stronger means engineering never has the buy-in to take the time to do things the right way. And if you're the engineer who consistently pushes back product and feature releases because you want things built correctly, you get fired, or at best marginalized.
Interesting that you mention Google, since it has a reputation for being more engineering-focused that most companies. From what I read on HN (perhaps not a representative sample, but...), it seems like Google has a culture of "build something cool to get promoted and then stop caring about what you built because maintenance doesn't get you promoted any further". If true, I think that very easily explains Google's "hot messes".
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#37It's interesting how quickly the social space changes. I remember when this first came out, and there was Meerkat as well, it felt like a lot of interesting innovations were possible when it came to social media. The space is starting to feel mature, and to me, a little stale. There isn't a sense of adventure and wonder now with social media.
I think people are just waking up to the fact that they deep down prefer being social in person. If it weren't for COVID-19, probably would have started to accelerate.
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#38This, I suppose, is unexpected. It reflects a similar fate of a lot of technology plays that grew fast. I would like to reflect however on this comment in the article -- "The truth is that the Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time."…
The most plausible explanation, to me, is that operating the product was not considered the primary purpose of the acquisition.
To be less subtle: it's to eliminate competition.
If my neighbor has a nice big cow, it's not crucial for me to obtain that cow for myself; it suffices that it die, while my cows live.
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#39This, I suppose, is unexpected. It reflects a similar fate of a lot of technology plays that grew fast. I would like to reflect however on this comment in the article -- "The truth is that the Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time."…
I don't want to be snarky, but there can totally be a non-technical outer context where all this was a very good strategic move.
Certainly, one should not always assume dark Machiavellian moves, lest we become too bitter and cynical, but business isn't engineering.
Read the book "The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life" by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. If not for other reasons, to acquire a different set of mental tools to understand motivation. Because I feel like you seem technically proficient but lacking in imagination of more important games of power in the background. And these aren't Disney villain machinations, they are normal everyday things that people implicitly understand and participate in, while being perfectly ordinary, nice, polite people, no mustache-twirling villains. Eat or be eaten. Periscope was eaten, now they are being shat out.
Re: Farewell, Periscope
#40So all periscopes that weren't shared with Twitter are just being deleted in three months?