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Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

andjosh.com

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Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#101

Post by illicium »

freshyill wrote: post #95

> When Twitter was gathering steam back in 2009-10, it did so because tweeting was done via SMS and not over a proprietary interface. I don't believe this for a second. In 2009-2010, there were already a huge number of smartphones and Twitter clients out there. In fact, that time was probably better for third-party Twitter clients than today. Smartphone growth exploded in 2009-2010, so the idea that "everyone was get…

Don't forget about Twitter's API and liberal usage policy that made the plethora of clients and mashups possible -- I think this accelerated their growth more than anything.

Their API is not so "free" now -- you need to register your app, always authenticate, and there's no public firehose access any more.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#102

Post by CodeCube »

freshyill wrote: post #95

> When Twitter was gathering steam back in 2009-10, it did so because tweeting was done via SMS and not over a proprietary interface. I don't believe this for a second. In 2009-2010, there were already a huge number of smartphones and Twitter clients out there. In fact, that time was probably better for third-party Twitter clients than today. Smartphone growth exploded in 2009-2010, so the idea that "everyone was get…

> Has anybody here ever even used Twitter via SMS?

yep :) I mean, both of our experiences are just anecdotal evidence pointing to each side of the argument. But in my experience, it made it easier to get onto the service.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#103

Post by amelius »

jackmaney wrote: post #81
amelius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But think about it... Suddenly every company can have Search Ad Services as good as Google's. Also, if you don't like what company X is doing, you just need to find N qualified people, and you can start your own X.

That's assuming that Search Ad Services by Google will have--or will be allowed to have--clients other than Google. And that, of course, is the entire point: to split a company up into what are technically smaller companies that, in effect, are just part of the head company.

Of course a company cannot be selective about its customers in a way that is anti competitive.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#104

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

freshyill wrote: post #95

> When Twitter was gathering steam back in 2009-10, it did so because tweeting was done via SMS and not over a proprietary interface. I don't believe this for a second. In 2009-2010, there were already a huge number of smartphones and Twitter clients out there. In fact, that time was probably better for third-party Twitter clients than today. Smartphone growth exploded in 2009-2010, so the idea that "everyone was get…

Yes. Many people did. Twitter's success at 140 characters was largely based on being accessible without the high cost of a smart phone at a time when not everyone had an iPhone or T-Mobile Android.

I don't have any hard statistics, but I used Twitter before I had a smartphone; and you asked a question where an anecdote would suffice.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#105

Post by 3pt14159 »

freshyill wrote: post #95

> When Twitter was gathering steam back in 2009-10, it did so because tweeting was done via SMS and not over a proprietary interface. I don't believe this for a second. In 2009-2010, there were already a huge number of smartphones and Twitter clients out there. In fact, that time was probably better for third-party Twitter clients than today. Smartphone growth exploded in 2009-2010, so the idea that "everyone was get…

When twitter first started out most people I knew were just starting to get smartphones. This is why things like text-to-twitter and twillio started off.

I would say by 2010, clients had taken over, but in 2008/2009 sms was really a thing.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#106

Post by amelius »

pjc50 wrote: post #87
amelius wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every department could be run by a separate company. This also ensures quality at the department level. These companies could then be hired by the hospital itself.

You were that guy promoting the "NHS internal market", weren't you? This is basically what happened: individual hospitals run by trusts, services contracted in. GPs responsible for allocating budgets. It hasn't made much of a difference beyond increasing the number of administrative staff.

Health care is working far from properly in the case of normal capitalism, so actually it is a bad example.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#107

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

illicium wrote: post #101
freshyill wrote: post #95

> When Twitter was gathering steam back in 2009-10, it did so because tweeting was done via SMS and not over a proprietary interface. I don't believe this for a second. In 2009-2010, there were already a huge number of smartphones and Twitter clients out there. In fact, that time was probably better for third-party Twitter clients than today. Smartphone growth exploded in 2009-2010, so the idea that "everyone was get…

Don't forget about Twitter's API and liberal usage policy that made the plethora of clients and mashups possible -- I think this accelerated their growth more than anything. Their API is not so "free" now -- you need to register your app, always authenticate, and there's no public firehose access any more.

This is a far better point. Twitter happened along in that magical time of AJAX when everyone was willing to share their data because we all talked about how everything should be free and open.

Then the social media companies realized that this was a gigantic mistake, and started to seal everything up. How could they be expected to make their billions when their services were so open that they were essentially becoming abstracted protocols for third party apps? The opportunity to sell advertising and personal data is far greater when what you have is closed.

I understand why they did it; I just hate that they did. It always felt like a massive bait and switch and I'm betting that Facebook and Twitter aren't going to be the last ones that do this.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#108

Post by alxndr »

sosborn wrote: post #74
TeMPOraL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of that we owe to the fact that people were finding ways around region locking, and that DVDs were also used for software distributions.

I'm willing to bet that the number of people working around region locking was so small (in a financial sense) that it didn't matter.

Don't Macs let you switch regions a limited number of times?

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#109

Post by freshyill »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #104
freshyill wrote: post #95

> When Twitter was gathering steam back in 2009-10, it did so because tweeting was done via SMS and not over a proprietary interface. I don't believe this for a second. In 2009-2010, there were already a huge number of smartphones and Twitter clients out there. In fact, that time was probably better for third-party Twitter clients than today. Smartphone growth exploded in 2009-2010, so the idea that "everyone was get…

Yes. Many people did. Twitter's success at 140 characters was largely based on being accessible without the high cost of a smart phone at a time when not everyone had an iPhone or T-Mobile Android. I don't have any hard statistics, but I used Twitter before I had a smartphone; and you asked a question where an anecdote would suffice.

Well my real point was that SMS isn't what drove Twitter's growth, which was a major point in the article.

Twitter's growth coincides very closely with smartphone usage growth, in 2009-2010—well after SMS was the norm for connecting to it, if it ever was. SMS may have been useful early on, but apps certainly killed SMS usage.

Re: Your App Is Not Better than an Open Protocol

#110

Post by amelius »

pdonis wrote: post #94
amelius wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an idea: there should be a maximum number N of employees a company can have. This enforces companies to think about the greater good, because if you're in a company that is split because of size, you might end up in a different company. Also, a maximum on the number of employees stimulates the "modularity" of the market: large conglomerates with internal markets will not be possible anymore. I'm not sure of al…

Does the term "economies of scale" mean anything to you?

Even large programs can be structured such that they have small modules. The same can apply to companies.
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