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Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

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Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#71

Post by aprendo »

riffic wrote: post #70
aprendo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you won't. You will be dramatically worse off. You have to go where your users are. And they are on Twitter, not your own hosted thing. Twitter will not make or break most organizations. If it were to disappear tomorrow most any organization will have plenty of time to look for alternatives. In the meantime Twitter wins. Always. By a mile.

Do you trust Twitter? Do you believe that they will have the same motivations that you do, as an organization? I believe that is the fundamental question you should be asking. I'm not really sure it matters where the users are. Ideally in a well designed system/protocol, it shouldn't matter. Email solved that problem 30 years ago.

No, I don't. But it doesn't matter. As an organization you have to go where your users are. And they are on Twitter.

This is something no single organization can solve. It's impossible. And email is about the absolute worst example. No, it absolutely didn't solve the problem. First the users had to come. Before that it was worthless.

I think many here are delusional about how this works.

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#72

Post by pyre »

dasht wrote: post #64
mapgrep wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inventing a new identity system that features 1, portability and 2, end-user price of $0 is surely possible, but surely more than "a little extra work." DNS has the virtue of being here now, being tested and refined over multiple decades, and offering a choice between subdomains for free or portability for a nominal annual cost. It's not perfect but it's good.

To avoid building in a dependency on DNS does not require that the identity system problem be fully solved, first. It only requires ensuring a good abstraction barrier before too much code propagates that depends directly on DNS. For example, perhaps, URIs.

Why can't the usernames be like email addresses?

  send email to username@example.net
    => lookup example.net
    => pull MX record
    => route email to example.com
Looks like a SRV record[1] could be used for this.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#73

Post by joe_the_user »

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 >_>

OK,

I don't use Twitter but I see celebrities and T&A a lot more when I log out of my yahoo webmail than when I'm on Facebook. Real, honest to god porn, for that matter, has stayed on the "open web". There are still, uh, forces pushing people that way.

Also, as far as I know the masses have never been on Twitter.

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#74

Post by [deleted] »

davewiner wrote: post #61
mvzink wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hopef…

You got it baby! That's exactly the idea. It's a bootstrap. You use the systems that are in place now to boot up the successor. It's never either/or. You use everything that works, that has people on it that you need to reach, as long as they welcome you. This has been the problem with Google-Plus. They don't have an API that lets you post to it. But Twitter does. To everyone who follows me on Twitter, they don't hav…

[deleted]

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#75

Post by dasht »

pyre wrote: post #72
dasht wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid building in a dependency on DNS does not require that the identity system problem be fully solved, first. It only requires ensuring a good abstraction barrier before too much code propagates that depends directly on DNS. For example, perhaps, URIs.

Why can't the usernames be like email addresses? send email to username@example.net => lookup example.net => pull MX record => route email to example.com Looks like a SRV record[1] could be used for this. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record

"Why can't the usernames be like email addresses?" [in the sense of querying DNS to find them].

In this context we're talking about what it takes to avoid relying on DNS (because DNS is a centralized, highly politicized system). Your solution would still rely on DNS.

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#76

Post by carols10cents »

mvzink wrote: post #8
bntly wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hopef…

That's exactly why I work on http://rstat.us [1] -- we need to be here, ready, for the next decision that Twitter makes that pisses more people off, for the next time that Twitter is down, etc.

[1] - a microblogging site that uses ostatus; we integrate with identi.ca. code here: https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#77

Post by carols10cents »

pyre wrote: post #72
dasht wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid building in a dependency on DNS does not require that the identity system problem be fully solved, first. It only requires ensuring a good abstraction barrier before too much code propagates that depends directly on DNS. For example, perhaps, URIs.

Why can't the usernames be like email addresses? send email to username@example.net => lookup example.net => pull MX record => route email to example.com Looks like a SRV record[1] could be used for this. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRV_record

Is the webfinger protocol [1] like email addresses in the way you're thinking of?

[1] - https://code.google.com/p/webfinger/wiki/WebFingerProtocol

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#78

Post by davewiner »

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 >_>

Read item #8 in the doc that you're discussing.

"8. BTW, it has to hook into Twitter. Key point. The thing that's kept the other networks from working is that they don't peer with Twitter. Luckily this is in keeping with the new Twitter mandate of putting stuff in but not taking stuff out. Great. If you want to read what someone says on Twitter you have to use Twitter. Not a big deal it turns out."

http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/25/anOpenTwitterlikeEco...

Re: Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem

#80

Post by smoyer »

davewiner wrote: post #66
unimpressive wrote: post #52

Hacking together a microblogging system out of RSS and Atom with a little network glue is fine for a prototype. But in the long run you won't beat Facebook and Twitter by merely replicating their functionality.

Beating them is not in the cards. If you look at tech industry cycles the leaders don't get beat, they run out of room to grow, or evolve into something less monolithic. Hegemony is always short lived. Once you get on top of the heap it's usually a short time before there's a new generation rising up.

You HAVE been reading Orson Scott Card! ;) But you're right and for a very good reason. The barrier to entry has dropped to the point where a single guy in NYC (or elsewhere) can challenge the status quo.
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