Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

scripting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 83 posts

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#2

Post by michaelpinto »

I wish more people would embrace what Dave Winer is saying here and run with the ball. The current web as we know it has benefited from an open ecosystem: everything from the servers running Apache to web pages serving up HTML. I see a real long term danger in closed walled gardens like Facebook and Twitter, they're just not healthy.

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#3

Post by bntly »

michaelpinto wrote: post #2

I wish more people would embrace what Dave Winer is saying here and run with the ball. The current web as we know it has benefited from an open ecosystem: everything from the servers running Apache to web pages serving up HTML. I see a real long term danger in closed walled gardens like Facebook and Twitter, they're just not healthy.

But there are celebrities and that hot girl from high-school within that walled garden.It sucks and i wish the products were better and more open but the bar for entry is mostly user draw, and T&A is what draws them in..

*edited for spelling >_>

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#6

Post by chris_mahan »

Uh, DNS is too hard for most people. So is maintaining a web server. If you want any kind of reliability you're going to have to spend 10/year on domain name, 15/year on good DNS server, and 10/month on web hosting. That's $145/yr. Users can use twitter and facebook for free.

Besides, the general public can't even use HTML well, so what chance do they have with xml?

The other compelling thing about twitter is that 140 characters thing. Blogs enable people to train-of-thought-rant for pages before making their point (if at all). Tweets, on the other hand, force people to think and condense before writing. That's an awesome feature for readers. Also, twitter makes it very easy to follow and unfollow.

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#8

Post by mvzink »

bntly wrote: post #3
michaelpinto wrote: post #2

I wish more people would embrace what Dave Winer is saying here and run with the ball. The current web as we know it has benefited from an open ecosystem: everything from the servers running Apache to web pages serving up HTML. I see a real long term danger in closed walled gardens like Facebook and Twitter, they're just not healthy.

But there are celebrities and that hot girl from high-school within that walled garden.It sucks and i wish the products were better and more open but the bar for entry is mostly user draw, and T&A is what draws them in.. *edited for spelling >_>

You just made me think of something. The common folk may as well continue using Twitter, and you're right about the bar to entry. We few, the vanguard of openness and reliability, can use approaches like Dave Winer's to provide an open, durable parallel "Twitter-like ecosystem" that integrates with Twitter—and once Twitter goes away (and Facebook and Google+ and even SMS) we will integrate with its successor—or hopefully, ideally, help create it's successor on top of the open web. It could be a durable base for future work, and a safety net for now.

Also: any time I consider using identi.ca again, it's with this view. Even if it doesn't gain popularity, I can at least provide my own guarantees that it will be around (so long as some few others use it) even when Facebook or Twitter go away.

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#9

Post by aaron-lebo »

chris_mahan wrote: post #6

Uh, DNS is too hard for most people. So is maintaining a web server. If you want any kind of reliability you're going to have to spend 10/year on domain name, 15/year on good DNS server, and 10/month on web hosting. That's $145/yr. Users can use twitter and facebook for free. Besides, the general public can't even use HTML well, so what chance do they have with xml? The other compelling thing about twitter is that 14…

It doesn't seem like Dave is advocating wrapping this up into something friendlier to end users. However, you certainly could have something powerful if you did.

I agree that expecting people to muck around with DNS and even RSS wouldn't gain wide-scale adoption.

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#10

Post by icebraining »

chris_mahan wrote: post #6

Uh, DNS is too hard for most people. So is maintaining a web server. If you want any kind of reliability you're going to have to spend 10/year on domain name, 15/year on good DNS server, and 10/month on web hosting. That's $145/yr. Users can use twitter and facebook for free. Besides, the general public can't even use HTML well, so what chance do they have with xml? The other compelling thing about twitter is that 14…

I think his suggestions are for the people who are planning on writing a Twitter-like open service: https://join.app.net/
Post reply on HN