Re:Ask YC: What makes Twitter so special?
by mechanical_fish on Thursday May 22, 2008 @07:41PM
(#197660)
Are people upvoting because they are avid users of twitter?
Yes, sometimes.
Or because the stories of scaling have potential lessons?
Yes.
Let me add a few observations of my own:
Are people upvoting because Twitter is a genuinely new and popular service, and hence very fashionable at this moment? Yes.
Are people upvoting because Twitter's design has just been sitting there, right in front of our faces, for years, and yet we plugged away on email and IM and static HTML sites and blogs and Facebook and never even thought of trying something like this, so we're fascinated to discover it in the same way that biologists were fascinated to discover the platypus? Yes.
Are people upvoting because they're still trying to understand what Twitter is, and how to build something like it themselves, but they're confused because it isn't really email, or IM, or a microblog, or Facebook? Yes.
Do half the folks on news.yc look at Twitter and see something that they simultaneously crave (a startup with a viral app) and fear (a startup with a viral app that is pissing off its customers) and envy (because the customers moan, and they complain, but they don't abandon Twitter for the alternatives, at least not yet)? So, try as they might, the entrepreneurs can't possibly look away?
Yes, sometimes.
Or because the stories of scaling have potential lessons?
Yes.
Let me add a few observations of my own:
Are people upvoting because Twitter is a genuinely new and popular service, and hence very fashionable at this moment? Yes.
Are people upvoting because Twitter's design has just been sitting there, right in front of our faces, for years, and yet we plugged away on email and IM and static HTML sites and blogs and Facebook and never even thought of trying something like this, so we're fascinated to discover it in the same way that biologists were fascinated to discover the platypus? Yes.
Are people upvoting because they're still trying to understand what Twitter is, and how to build something like it themselves, but they're confused because it isn't really email, or IM, or a microblog, or Facebook? Yes.
Do half the folks on news.yc look at Twitter and see something that they simultaneously crave (a startup with a viral app) and fear (a startup with a viral app that is pissing off its customers) and envy (because the customers moan, and they complain, but they don't abandon Twitter for the alternatives, at least not yet)? So, try as they might, the entrepreneurs can't possibly look away?
Yes.