Earlier quoted context omitted.
Storm will be rewritten in scala
Do you really know that or are your just guessing?
We're going to continue using Clojure just like before.
Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#42and yet no profit has been had...good job twitter, good job
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#43I don't get it. Are startups now just a new resume? How are BackType users supposed to react to this? How are users supposed to trust other API startups if they can just get the rug pulled out from them like this? I'm happy for the team, but is there not any way they could have transitioned the project to other developers and still joined twitter fulltime?
Start-ups are businesses. They make money for their investors and founders. Handing off the code sounds like hippie poppycock to me. I suppose they can do it if they want to, but they don't have to.
Seems like it's a valuable asset and they are wasting it. If twitter just cares about the team, why not sell the product to another team who can keep building and extending it.
Similar thing happened when facebook bought the mac developer Sofa. They sold off their products to another developer.
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#44and yet no profit has been had...good job twitter, good job
Companies rarely buy other companies for their profits. Most of the time it's a strategic move e.g. Twitter purchasing Tweetdeck to protect itself from aggressive moves by UberMedia
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#45Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#46I wish that when a headline announced "Big company acquires little startup you've never heard of" that it would be accompanied by some explanation of what the little startup actually does, and why it is interesting.
Yeah agreed. And their site doesn't seem to say anything either, other than they've been acquired by Twitter.
Looking at Google search results it appears to be social analytics. I guess they spit out metrics on brand mentions, retweets, compute scores or ranks on "buzz", and probably do sentiment too. But I'm guessing wildly.
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#47I wish that when a headline announced "Big company acquires little startup you've never heard of" that it would be accompanied by some explanation of what the little startup actually does, and why it is interesting.
You would typically know about it if you're into social media analytics and metrics and its effects on advertising and so on. Their technology stack is very cool. The amount of data it needs to process is staggering. And this whole field is relatively new so there are tons of potential in it.
Yes but even the fairly niche demographic of HN extends to those with interests outside of social analytics.
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but it reinforces the notion that you can't put too much faith in a startup sticking it out. Normally that's because people think they might go bust and you'll lose that thing you got used to having. It also applies to when a startup gets acquired and the service is then shut down. Folks who've been stung by this once might think twice before using/buying stuff from a small company in future.
So far, I haven't heard a PEEP from anyone paying backtype. If what you say is true, where is all the press about how horrible this is for their customers?
I'm making a general point about why people don't always like to use products from startups and how this particular case reinforces their views. I wasn't suggesting that backtype had paying customers.
Also, a lack of press coverage does not mean there aren't unhappy users out there.
Re: Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but it reinforces the notion that you can't put too much faith in a startup sticking it out. Normally that's because people think they might go bust and you'll lose that thing you got used to having. It also applies to when a startup gets acquired and the service is then shut down. Folks who've been stung by this once might think twice before using/buying stuff from a small company in future.
So far, I haven't heard a PEEP from anyone paying backtype. If what you say is true, where is all the press about how horrible this is for their customers?
We're using the BackType API and it is frustrating that they're discontinuing the API. They've also just announced the discontinuation of the service with no word about timescales that this entails. For all we know they could discontinue it tomorrow.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anyone offering a real alternative to the BackType APIs. There is Topsy which doesn't seem to have as much data coverage. Other alternatives require handling live streams of considerably more data.