A while ago, I made a small investment in a Vancouver company called Smallthought Systems, which has now been acquired by Twitter. Thus, I am now the owner of a small number of Twitter shares, and may fairly be suspected of bias when discussing that company. I continue to admire and use Twitter, and also continue to think that it’s a bug when an apparently-fundamental medium for human communications is the product of a single company.



Contributions

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From: len (Jun 10 2010, at 11:05)

I think you overrate the fundamental nature of Twitter; on the other hand, given your position of ownership, it is understandable. :)

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From: Devdas Bhagat (Jun 10 2010, at 12:03)

Twitter is IRC over HTTP. We still have the original.

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From: velin (Jun 10 2010, at 14:36)

2nd on the IRC.

And if one insist on HTTP, there's StatusNet

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From: Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart (Jun 10 2010, at 16:19)

Won't claim to understand Twitter, but, the closest definition to me is PubSub with lazily defined keys over HTTP/SMS/... But that does not capture it all..

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From: Bob Aman (Jun 10 2010, at 19:27)

Congrats to Avi Bryant and company!

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From: Paul Morriss (Jun 11 2010, at 00:47)

If twitter is IRC over HTTP, why don't people sprinkle little IRC over HTTP buttons around their websites like they do with Twitter (and Facebook)?

Twitter being dominant is more of a human engineering, than software engineering problem.

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From: tmolini (Jun 11 2010, at 09:33)

Congrats! Perhaps now I can get access to my account since the original email registration was through a company that no longer exists.

During the process to change my email address associated with twitter, they required confirmation be sent to the original address. Since that company was acquired and let folks go, this is impossible.

I spent a lot of time and effort getting my account setup and don't feel that I should have to do it again with a 'new' ID. Suggestions?

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From: Pat Collins (Jun 11 2010, at 11:10)

I'm pretty sure that's the exact definition of a "fad."

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From: Bart Lantz (Jun 11 2010, at 18:41)

It also worries me that this important medium is controlled by one company. Also twitter is not IRC, when was the last time an IRC conversation appeared on a google search?

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author · Dad
colophon · rights
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June 10, 2010
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