Startup Toolbox

Jay Parkhill August 2nd, 2008

Fred Wilson’s tumblog pointed me this morning to a post about why Twitter has been so successful and is so well loved despite all its problems and downtime.

Why Twitter Still Wins | chrisbrogan.com

Chris makes the point that Twitter’s openness has saved it.  He says:

One way to win in software is to make your application fertile for building upon. Open your API. Give people tools to build an ecosystem around it. And it becomes a lot harder to pull away and go elsewhere.

Unfortunately, in Twitter’s case the last sentence should be followed by the phrase “no matter how badly the service behaves”.  Twitter has definitely become successful despite itself.

A commenter on Chris’s blog made an even better comment.  Michael Durwin points out that Twitter created something completely new. This struck a chord with me.  I attended a social web event put on by Niall Kennedy in late 2006 or early 2007 where Twitter presented.  The company was still focused on Odeo, the product it launched around.  Biz Stone talked about staffers inside the company thought it was funny when people posted clever notes in their IM status- “hung over” or “shouldn’t have eaten the whole burrito” instead of merely “busy” or “available”.

The point is that Twitter arrived on the scene when the idea of micro-messaging was embryonic at best. (On hearing Biz’s talk my own response was that Twitter sounded like the dumbest, most narcissistic thing imaginable, and I continued to feel that way for about 8 more months until I completely fell in love with the service)

The title of this post is about Twitter’s advantages and disadvantages as a first mover.  As Michael Durwin points out, Twitter created a new genre of communication.  its advantage is that it is the first and best known product in its category and has the most users.

On the other hand, Twitter’s problem is that its developers had no idea how micro-messaging would grow.  Its architecture was apparently not designed to accomodate many of the things people would like to see, like threaded messaging, photos, video and comments.  Newer entrants in the field such as Friendfeed can use all this knowledge to build more flexible platforms (taking note as well of why rivals such as Jaiku and Pownce have largely failed to captivate). 

So to sum it up, Twitter’s situation today is basically this:

Advantages: best known, well developed community/social graph, lots of great third-party extensions

Disadvantages: needs to rebuild platform now that we know what people want from micro-messaging platforms

I’m rooting for Twitter.  I sure hope they can rebuild fast enough, but people aren’t going to wait forever.

• Twitter , social graph , social media

Jay Parkhill June 6th, 2008

I don’t totally get the point of FriendFeed- or maybe I just don’t like it. I consider it a meta-social network because it doesn’t do a lot that is totally new. It aggregates my contributions across the web (and those of people I follow), but there isn’t very much to actually do on the service.

At the same time, I would love a social web “home base”- a place I where I could both aggregate and contribute. I use Twitter and Brightkite a lot, but one friend might post often to Flickr and another to Yelp. Home Base would be a single place from which I could both keep track of my friends’ activity, and also interact with their photos, tweets and reviews.

Friendfeed lets me post to Twitter, but still isn’t as dynamic as that platform and it ends up being just another place for me to check, but not to post from.

In the end, it comes down to where most of my friends are. I have the most contacts on Facebook currently, but interact with people less there than any other other social network I’m on. That’s just me, I know. Plenty of people have entirely fulfilling internet social lives on Facebook.

I’ve realized that the place I interact with friends the most is Twitter. In addition, many other services feed into Twitter easily, so I can add a new service and not have to rebuild my social graph there before it becomes useful.

I’m close to the point of putting my Twitter ID on my email signature because it’s such a good way to get in touch with me, but at the same time I’m afraid of getting any more attached to Twitter because of its reliability problems. It’s really a shame. The service is so easy and so valuable. I sure hope they can overcome their “we built the wrong platform at the outset” issues and become the powerhouse they deserve to be.

twitter.com/park3

• Twitter , social graph , social media

Jay Parkhill May 22nd, 2008

There has been a dust-up in certain corners of the Internet recently over Twitter’s alleged failure to deal appropriately with interpersonal conduct on the site. The relevant tweets have been removed, so none of the facts are easily verifiable. To summarize the story quickly, though:

*social media consultant Ariel Walden complained to Twitter that she was being stalked and harassed on Twitter by a specific user.

*Twitter declined to take action several times over several months, citing a desire not to filter content appearing on the platform, and also saying that the alleged conduct did not, in Twitter’s mind, violate the site’s Terms of Use.

*Twitter recently made several public comments on the matter, including one to say that it is reviewing its Terms of Use to more clearly say that it will not actively monitor content.

I spent a little time looking at this and came away interested much more in the issue as a study of human behavior than anything else. Specifically, comments on Twitter’s official blog post contain nothing but glowing praise for Twitter’s approach. In contrast, the thread on Twitter’s support forum is filled with nothing but condemnation of the company. Literally in each case- the comments are 100% pro-Twitter in one venue, and 100% pro-Walden in the other.

Is there a point to this? Possibly not, except that even within Twitter, finding “community” depends on how you turn the coin- look to the official outlet and find Twitter diehard supporters; look to the support forums and find a completely different view. Fascinating.

• Twitter , Uncategorized , social media

Jay Parkhill March 31st, 2008

Moira Gunn’s Tech Nation podcast covers a lot of ground and has some great interviews. One of the most interesting I have heard in a long time was with NYU professor Clay Shirky, who wrote a recent book on social media.

The best part of the interview was where he talked about the use of social web tools for political purposes. Starting with a reminder that Chinese students used fax machines in 1989 to obtain Western reports on the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown, he went on to discuss several examples of social media being used to record things that matter to the world- as opposed to everyday events that matter to specific individuals. My favorites:

* A flash mob convened in October Square, Minsk, Belarus in May 2006 (in Belarussian(?) with lots of pictures) to eat ice cream. Mass gatherings in October Square are illegal and security forces monitor the same social networks as the activists, so plainclothes police were ready and arrested a number of participants. Photos document the entire episode, including the arrests.

*Twitter used by Egyptian activists to let the community know their whereabouts, esp. whether they have been arrested. Shirky pointed out that when the fact of a person’s arrest is widely known, the likelihood that the person will be seen again increases dramatically. In this case, Alaa was able to Twitter the circumstances of his detention from his mobile phone.

Shirky opines that tools like Twitter and SMS mean that connectivity is an all-or-nothing proposition for repressive governments. I don’t think he has it quite right- China and other countries manage to screen web sites effectively. The point is well taken, though- lightweight communication tools can find ways through the walls. This is really inspirational stuff.

• Twitter , Uncategorized , social media