zlacker

>>antina+(OP)
So to recap, Twitter exploded onto the scene in 2007, the "fail whale" appeared a lot, developers made all sorts of wonderful programs hooked into Twitter, the fail whale disappeared, Twitter started to destroy the app ecosystem, App.net launched to great fanfare in response to Twitter's knuckleheaded anti-developer stance, Britney Spears and Justin Bieber arrived and knocked all the nerds out of the top spots on Twitterholic, Donald Trump came and bludgeoned everyone with his bombastic prose, and now App.net is shutting down.

And after all this, Twitter still does not have a viable business model.

>>milesf+q9
> And after all this, Twitter still does not have a viable business model.

...more pertinently, App.net didn't have one either - and they had an open API, charged real money and did all the things HNers' idealized version of Twitter would.

>>sangno+El
Maybe because the reason people use twitter isn't because it is useful but rather because

Either:

It is cool. So we must use it.

Or:

Everyone else is using it so we must use it too.

Seriously:

140 characters? Feature?

Everyone can read everything? Feature?

The two biggest technical "features" of twitter can be arrived at by dumbing down either google+ or facebook 98%.

>>reitan+jn
I consider "everyone can read everything" one of the most important parts of Twitter.

I wouldn't use Twitter if it was limited to people I already know, for instance.

>>sspiff+ew
But every other platform has that as well.

It is just that twitter only has that option.

>>reitan+Lz
Yes, but most other platforms don't have the same level of vibrant public discussions.

On things like Facebook, discussions are mostly between friends or "friends of friends", with no chance of an outside opinion, for instance.

>>sspiff+MP
Well going further than that, on Facebook, for a lot of people the majority of their 'friends' are school friends (for younger people often their entire school year, even the years above/below), and extended family, people that they feel obligated to add (due to Facebook's pressure to have a high friend count).

These are ultimately people they wouldn't choose to follow the conversations of at all, given the choice.

For me Twitter was like starting with a clean slate. I just follow the people I want to follow, basically no 'friends', just interesting people.