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Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

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Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#281

Post by balaji1 »

pjc50 wrote: post #81
balaji1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inventing some protocol around the Dunbar number is interesting. There was something similar in the Weatherford's book on Genghis Khan [1][2]. This system was described to be very effective for communicating and coordinating the huge military. > In Genghis Khan's military system, a tumen was recursively built from units of 10 (aravt), 100 (zuut) and 1,000 (mingghan), each with a leader reporting to the next higher le…

Pretty much every effective military in history has had this kind of hierarchical structure, by both imitation and convergent evolution. I'm sure there's a post on https://acoup.blog/ about it.

Makes sense that effective militaries are well-organized like this. Militaries have conducted big engineering projects for civic purposes, all thru history - don't remember the exact anecdote. But found a wiki[1] by quick google search.

I will checkout this blog, maybe it has some posts about non-military initiatives also.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_Army_Co...

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#282

Post by totemandtoken »

nebqr wrote: post #97

I think that the (dead, gay) Something Awful forums model is a decent solution to content moderation and monetization. An account is 10 dollars (lifetime). If you get banned, you have to pay 10 dollars again. Permabanned = can't come back. Premium? (dms, search, custom avatar) 10 dollars. Change your avatar? 5 dollars. Change someone else's avatar? 10 dollars. Ad free? 10 dollars. Access to archives (posts over a cer…

A mixed model would be kind of interesting... Like, first time signing up it's free but if you get banned then you have to pay, if you get permabanned, tough luck.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#283

Post by mawise »

ninth_ant wrote: post #261
greensoap wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the "you only see what you subscribe to" increase the echo chamber of the web. Would it led to "here are more thoughts that you already agree with" which means people won't have a chance to see the other side of a coin?

Is a public-mostly forum like Twitter actually good at escaping bubbles though? It seems to me that most of what passes for discourse there is yelling at the “other side” and smug/snarky in-group posts.

It's definitely a risk. I remember talking with peers in undergrad about the campus bubble we lived in compared to the surrounding community (which was not as affluent). Ultimately I think people need safe spaces to explore ideas. If they are surrounded by a world that is a battleground over identity, then they're going to dig in and fight. If they are surrounded by people they trust, then I think they have room to explore different ideas.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#285

Post by matai_kolila »

peterhunt wrote: post #54

No one here is answering your question so I will :) Database: I’d use whatever you know and helps you get to market, but abstract it away from the rest of your app so you can swap out later. Lots of good choices here; I’d pick mysql or postgres running on rds. I would also design for sharding by user on day 1 because that can be extremely painful to add later, however, care would have to be taken to ensure it doesn’t…

I'd go for redis a bit earlier, it's just so easy to use! I wouldn't cache much at all to start, then at like 10k users (or wherever my benchmarking says to) I'd include it w/redis.

React is a decent choice also here because you can port it wherever. One code base for web/iOS/Android is probably critical given how few dev resources you'd want to spend on it (you've got the right idea there too).

Also agree w/r/t decentralization. I think this is a fantasy for nerds but most people really do not care about privacy no matter how much people try to explain it to them.

I guess one thing I would add here is I'd work very hard to minimize operational costs for as long as I can, until you can show the explosive growth that'll interest investors. There are a ton of scrappy ways to save money on a tech stack like this early on, and you can probably find a way to get that AWS/GCP/Azure credit money to basically make this free to operate until your F&F round.

One you have a userbase, just... idk, iterate with them. Everyone and their mother probably has ideas for what they'd like Not-Twitter to be, but finding what the GCD is for that would be important to sustain growth I bet.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#287

Post by nprateem »

jalapenos wrote: post #277

I think posts like this illustrate why MBAs retain their power over organisations, despite the constant complaints about them by engineers. There couldn't be a greater perspective gap. The "how" is the absolute last question, the "what" is the first. Can you imagine the following conversation: "Hey you should sign up to Facebook!" "Oh, why?" "It's got a great tech stack!". Me nether. To design an alternative Twitter…

Well actually, an alternative Twitter is still missing the point. Twitter *is* microblogging.

The real question Elon should have asked is what's beyond Twitter, i.e. what should he have built instead of trying to pivot Twitter towards, with all its baggage?

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#288

Post by [deleted] »

baxtr wrote: post #13

Everyone, please stop thinking about HOW you want to build a twitter alternative. No one cares. I have tried to build one, I failed even though our tech was superb. If you really want to build a twitter alternative think about how you would DISTRIBUTE it. How would you get a critical mass on the platform so that is viable, i.e. interesting enough for users to stick around. Which existing social networks (not media on…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#289

Post by stackbutterflow »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #132
tootie wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One-time fees are not very sustainable. Unless the model included essentially building an endowment the first ten years and then funding the business off of interest.

Lots of devices attached to ongoing services today are sold for a one-time fee. For most of their existence, Microsoft and Adobe had very sustainable businesses based on one-time fees. It is a fine model. Software companies today are addicted to "recurring revenue" (thinking that is the only way to get sustainable cash flow), but a lot of people will pay you $20 once who would never pay you $1/month, and there will a…

They were releasing new version every other year. You cannot sell a new version of a website.

> and there will always be new people using popular products.

If you succeed in being the go-to platform for every new generation you might be able to coast on that. But the last 20 years have shown that each generation gets its own new social network.

Re: Ask HN: How would you design an alternative Twitter

#290

Post by yrgulation »

The design of a new twitter doesnt start with the how question. You can write it in php or even python for all i (or the market) care. The question is what a new twitter should be used for. Politics and social issues will always be loud and argumentative, so we probably dont need that as thats what twitter already does. A nice community for people to follow other people for various crafts and topics would indeed be nice. Maybe a place where we can follow popular scientists, technical organisations, artists, actors, and generally speaking anyone non political. Something as basic as twitter in terms of ui but without the garbage twitter has.
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