{"id":34,"date":"2009-08-01T13:19:50","date_gmt":"2009-08-01T20:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/?p=34"},"modified":"2025-09-15T20:08:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T20:08:54","slug":"why-twitter-is-so-popular-and-what-i-dont-like-about-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/why-twitter-is-so-popular-and-what-i-dont-like-about-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Twitter is popular and what I dislike about that"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article talks about Twitter but the points made here apply equally to Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are two reasons Twitter took off like it did.\u00a0 First<\/strong><\/em>, it fills a desire in the culture for ubiquitous notifications from everyone to everyone.\u00a0 Second<\/strong><\/em>, it did so in a way that is immediately accessible and easy to use for anyone with a web browser.\u00a0 I.e., real time simple peer-to-peer notifications that are both created and accessed via existing ubiquitous technology.<\/p>\n

Twitter lets people create notifications and “follow” other peoples notifications.\u00a0 And, it does that via the Web by letting people both write and view notifications in a browser.\u00a0 It can’t get any simpler than that, can it?<\/p>\n

Hence, a simple idea (real time notifications) combined with providing that via existing tools that everyone already has on their computers and cell phones.<\/p>\n

Why do I say I don’t like that?\u00a0 It’s not that I don’t like the idea.\u00a0 And I commend the authors of Twitter for making the starkly simple realization that all this was both desired and so easily provided.\u00a0 They will become very rich because of that realization combined with what I don’t like about the situation.\u00a0 That is, the mechanism for providing Tweets is proprietary.<\/p>\n

Although the mechanisms for writing and following Tweets are standards-based (standard message protocol, HTTP, and HTML basically), the creators of Twitter co-opted the concept of notifications by providing the mechanism via a branded web server.\u00a0 And therein lies the rub.\u00a0 Although web clients are free and ubiquitous, web servers are not.\u00a0 Web servers and domain names are owned.\u00a0 By co-opting the concept of ubiquitous notifications via a proprietary web server, Twitter has enriched a few people who happened to think of the idea first.\u00a0 It’s not always this way.\u00a0 For example, the Web itself, which arguably underpins all things Twitter-like, was developed by socialized programs (called science, academic research, and just plain good engineering) done by governments and government-funded research.\u00a0 (One of many arguments I make that government is not bad as the Libertarian Fundamentalists like to believe).<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nFacebook is another example.\u00a0 It is hard to make a Web site so Facebook made it easy.\u00a0 A subject to another day, but you get the point.<\/p>\n

Are there alternatives to these proprietary mechanisms?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 For example, RSS feeds provide a mechanism very similar to Tweets.\u00a0 In fact, RSS feeds provide a richer mechanism.\u00a0 And, RSS feeds are also built in or can be built in to browsers,although they are not anywhere near as accessible as Tweets.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 The problem is that there is no central <\/strong><\/em>place to find all RSS feeds and there is no ubiquitous easily accessible place to write and distribute RSS feeds.\u00a0 Generalizing slightly, we live in a culture where identity and mind share is still proprietary.\u00a0 There is no standard freely available centralized<\/em> place to create content for the Web.\u00a0 Now, Google and others provide a central place to search for identity, but not to create it.\u00a0 And Google itself is proprietary.\u00a0 Think about it.\u00a0 All Web servers are owned.\u00a0 There is a reason for that.\u00a0 Unlike the client (the web browser), the server (the web server) has to have lots and lots of memory.\u00a0 Real memory.\u00a0 And processors, lots of processors.\u00a0 And that all costs money.<\/p>\n

There are solutions.\u00a0 We could distribute the notion of identity across a pool of volunteers who would provide resources for a large distributed server.\u00a0 It would be public, non-proprietary, secure, and ultimately scalable to any size needed.\u00a0 Alternatively, one or more governments could provide the central server.\u00a0 In one of these ways, we would be able to provide a server side of the equation in a way that scales, does not require advertising or other revenue, is a shared resource, and achieves everything that the Twitters and Facebooks of the world achieve.\u00a0 It would be a large non-proprietary sand box where equal numbers of ideas are tried out and what wins is, just as now, based on popularity and viral acquisition of mind share.<\/p>\n

I am sure my idea is not new and has bugs.\u00a0 But I wanted to get this off my mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article talks about Twitter but the points made here apply equally to Facebook. There are two reasons Twitter took off like it did.\u00a0 First, it fills a desire in the culture for ubiquitous notifications from everyone to everyone.\u00a0 Second, it did so in a way that is immediately accessible and easy to use for … Continue reading Why Twitter is popular and what I dislike about that<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2114,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/2114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanpark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}