On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 12:25 AM, SJS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > begin quoting Bob La Quey as of Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 03:07:52PM -0700: >> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 5:51 PM, SJS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > begin quoting Todd Walton as of Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 06:54:29PM -0500: >> >> What? You're not going to explain what's at that link? >> >> >> > Slow-motion IRC. >> >> Nope. That's what I thought at first but that's not it. > > There are actually several different sub-communities in twitter, it > seems. There's the story-tellers (which is how I started following > twitters many months ago) at one extreme, who don't respond to anyone, > and then there are the mass-followers at the other extreme, who seem > to only respond to others. (And a whole bunch in between and a few off > at right angles.)
Much more than several. many. More on this later. >> Think about the follower/following networks. You just >> cannot do that for every user with IRC. See > > Twitter doesn't seem to be doing that well at it either. Agreed. But the abstract architecture, which I am confidant will be implmented by someone in a scalable fashion sooner or later is what interests me. > It'll be interesting to see if twitter can scale as well as IRC without > adopting some of IRC's conventions. I think that problem will be solved. If by no other means by massive amounts of hardware being thrown at it. >> http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/01/18/faqIsDecentralizedTwitterJ.html > > Interesting. > > I agree that everyone's experience is different. However, this does not > really distinguish twitter from IRC. What does is the following/follower strutture of the network. I assert that is _not_ what you get with IRC. > The folks who work on twitter consider it a micro-blogging system; I can > buy that -- and it makes a lot of sense, too. How a sizable number of > people *use* twitter, however, is not necessarily this way. Gree to both points. > The author claims that IRC is very symmetric, but I hold that the author > is quite incorrect there. "...if I listen to you, then you listen to me. > And vice versa." is, well, wrong. Or if not wrong, then not really right. Please elaborate. > IRC *defaults* to listen-to-everyone; on the other hand, twitter defaults > to listen-to-noone. Upon reflection, this might be the key difference, > and would explain the (currently) low levels of trolls and flamewars. And again the core following/follower network structure is different from IRC. Think about how you would emulate that structure with IRC. You receive input streams from all the people you are following. You broadcast to all of the people who are following you. That is the core basis for twitter. More analysis of this later. Winer's notion that twitter is like rss aggregation seems to me to be the key insight. >> Twitter is actually a real time notification service, or >> will be if they ever get the scaling worked out. As such >> it will be hugely useful. I am looking at apps based on >> that functionality. > > Meh. There are real-time notification services out there that do a much > better job; it seems that twitter is trying to emulate one with a really > poor underlying architecture. Tell me about good real time notification services. I would like to know of one that is scaable to large numbers. I have applications. I agree that elements of the architecture being used to impelment twitter are almost certainlyu very wrong for the job. Twitter likely believes the same thing and is working (now that they have $15 Million VC money on a $100 Million valuation) on that very problem. > >> As twitter chat it will be hugely popular. Why? Because >> people all over the world love to engage in idle chatter. > > Hel-lo! IRC? > > Of course, the one advantage twitter has (over IRC) is that it can be > done via a cell phone. But given the advent of the iPhone, I'm not > really sure that's going to be much of an advantage in a couple of > years. The IPhone is a tiny US phenomena. For decades the ROW will be using other phones. Do not confuse a few million US tecnofreaks with the other 6 Billion people on the planet. IPhone like things will emerge because of Moore's law and leapfrog the IPhone simply because development is very uneven. So maybe on that level I agree. The serious global market is going to be for nearly free communication ($5/month) on a $10 device. A market of billions of people. >> The less content the better. Have you ever watched Fiipinos >> texting? This will likely turn into a billion user global >> network. > > Quite possibly -- the 140 character limit creates a sort of surreality > that's amusing and (potentially) a framework for creativity. (But then, > I'm one of those wackos who think that limits HELP art. Crazy, innit?) > > The stuff without content isn't really interesting; it's the stuff that > obviously has content, but is crammed into short bits of text that's > interesting. Glimpses of content convey shards of meaning, like poetry > under a strobe. The stuff without content will always make up the largest flow. Birds chatter, so do humans. > Can't say I've watched filipinos texting; but most of my texting is > really rather bland and unamusing. (I blame the keyboard.) Birds chatter, so do humans. The content is _not_ the message. >> The company "twitter" may or may not survive though. >> >> But twitter will. > > Very likely. It's amusing. Yes. More so than most of the content. > -- > The adventures of Othar Tryggvassen are quite entertaining. > Stewart Stremler Guess I will look him up. BobLQ -- KPLUG-List@kernel-panic.org http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
