I feel so naive / out-of-touch when Twitter comes up. How is it we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. Like we do for email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did Unix for that matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great things, but why don't we move from innovation to standardized protocols to enhance the user experience of the internet. Is it just great marketing driven by profits. As I said, I'm probably just naive, but it sure seems like a trivial protocol to write and then we can all jump on the task of building clients.
There is some truth to the classic HN post that "Twitter can be built in a weekend". A service / protocol that can distribute 280 character messages isn't really where the value is for a service like Twitter. It's 20% engineering, 80% recruiting the right users, retaining them, and getting them to engage on the platform.
Additionally, open protocols are way harder to evolve and are therefore less competitive with closed services. The only reason why email has stuck around as long as it has is because it locked everyone in with its network effect before commercial players figured out how to compete.
Additionally, email isn't really an open protocol in practice. Sure, it's spec'd, but in order to actually participate in the network you need to navigate a really complicated system of anti-spam reputation systems. This is why people just end up paying companies like Twilio to send email instead of running their own servers.
Overall, I don't think we should be looking to learn any lessons from email. It achieved market dominance in a time that doesn't look anything like the modern era, and is much more complex than most people realize.
This is straight up denialist and hyperbolic FUD. There's a healthy and vibrant ecosystem surrounding the federated social web, which has been a thing since 2008 or so.
Also, I would argue that email's staying power isn't quite backed by the answer you gave ("it locked everyone in with its network effect") but more along the lines that it survived the Lindy effect (the great thing about this is that it's not going to its grave as a technology anytime soon).
I think the denialism is that open standards somehow magically win. That's only happened a few times and is the reason that the Web is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure humanity has ever created.
Yes, there are people using federated social products but the growth rate is low and so are the absolute numbers. If growth were good, we would see VC backed startups trying to profit off of it. Why do you think that is?
> How is it we don't have a simple micro-blogging protocol. Like we do for email. Twitter didn't invent it, neither did Unix for that matter. Twtxt and others are doing some great things, but why don't we move from innovation to standardized protocols to enhance the user experience of the internet.
I read an interesting point somewhere: empirically, platforms can change an innovate far faster than protocols. The example given was encryption: email doesn't have it, even though people have been talking about it for literally decades, but WhatsApp added it in a relatively short time (a year? less?).
It makes sense. With a protocol, once it gets popular, change becomes really hard. It's like herding cats to get everyone to update, so things stagnate at the lowest common denominator for interoperability reasons. When all the software and installs are controlled by one entity, that entity can make a decision to change and just execute it, no herding needed.
The problem is number of users they want to see on that platform. If you want to follow/read/interact with someone you will be there. If not you do not care about it. It is surprisingly hard to make a network of people if your network has no people in it. I had to teach this lesson to several managers over the years 'setup a page where our users can interact'. That turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was getting anyone to actually post anything. Much less interact with each other. That happens a decent amount when you try to move into a space that already has established players.
I use Mastodon as well as Twitter. Even though there are things that I love about it, I can't say it's easier to use or has more appeal than Twitter.
I think Twitter is easier for the mass public to join. Go to Twitter.com, put username and password, verify phone number. Done! The screens are cleaner and very intuitive.
For mastodon, there's more text and messaging about the differences regarding Twitter, what's the Fediverse, instance rules. So you just landed on the main screen and you have to think about choosing an instance with different number of people, different rules.
After you are in, you can't search!! You can only search usernames or hashtags, but that is REALLY cumbersome and ineffective since people don't write "This is my #Twilight #book #review #bookreview URL". If you are not tech/privacy focused, the trending tags are usually not interesting, apart from #caturday I guess?.
Even after you are able to follow people, you can't quote-retweet (which is a pro AND a con), and even "retweeting" is cumbersome if you are on someone's profile from another instance.
Sharing is also more cumbersome since there's no bookmarklet or chrome extension that I could find, and sites don't have a "share on mastodon" link. The solution was to enable a cross-poster, so I just keep posting on Twitter.
About instances: on some main instances, speed is ok, but try to follow some pic focused profiles on smaller instances. It can take like 5~10 seconds for an image to load. And now on the iPhone official app, I can't seem to be able to download pictures anymore, and the option to bookmark a post (not like) is not there, only on the web-mobile version.
Technology isn't the hard part, for example Mastodon exists and works fine. Funding a sustained product delivery effort is expensive, developing a value prop big enough to overcome network effects is really hard, etc.
