Comments on: Twitter Needs an Offline Mode and an Open Client

By: youtube downloader

youtube downloader — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:49:00 +0000

We need one layer of abstraction. One way to do this would be to use a client like Twhirl, and give it the availability to write tweets to two places: an RSS feed (so we could do more with the data- and I want that feature anyway, Loic. Okay?), and the second to an intermediate database somewhere on the Amazon S3 cloud.

By: Prettyg101

Prettyg101 — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:31:52 +0000

By: ed hardy

ed hardy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:10:05 +0000

By: Links of the Week May 21 to May 24 | God is a Girl

Links of the Week May 21 to May 24 | God is a Girl — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 09:04:14 +0000

[...] Twitter Needs an Offline Mode and an Open Client [...]

By: chrisbrogan

chrisbrogan — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:06:34 +0000

@James – some really good points in your reply. You’re right that I didn’t think much about the block feature, for instance. Same with @replies.

And yet, I think the core of what I’m trying to do is get it to run when the back end is down. It’s not that I want to re-architect to clear the flaws. I want the patch to fix the bad stuff.

Still, great points that I wasn’t considering much.

By: chrisbrogan

chrisbrogan — Sun, 25 May 2008 10:06:00 +0000

@James – some really good points in your reply. You’re right that I didn’t think much about the block feature, for instance. Same with @replies.

And yet, I think the core of what I’m trying to do is get it to run when the back end is down. It’s not that I want to re-architect to clear the flaws. I want the patch to fix the bad stuff.

Still, great points that I wasn’t considering much.

By: James

James — Sun, 25 May 2008 05:14:31 +0000

Chris,

Your still missing the point of what the problem is. The problem is, from my understanding, in b) Message Processing. The storage is trivial – anyone with a rudimentary understanding of servers can solve that part.

Logically processing the messages in the way twitter is structured is the problem. Now my initial thought is that this suggests they built twitter from the wrong direction when it comes to message processing and that it’s a relatively easy fix overall but they started out in the wrong direction architecturally. I could be completely off on this and oversimplifying the architecture and the problem they’re facing. But regardless, it’s not a hardware problem, it’s a software problem either way.

You suggest it’s as easy having Twhirl read an XML copy, but think about how many different XML copies it has to make and what decisions have to go into those XML feeds. When Twitter is up and running the API call is simple – Here’s a couple of variables, give me the 20 most recent messages along those values. Unfortunately when Twitter isn’t up, I don’t believe it’s anywhere near that simple – at least not given what I think their approach has been so far.

It’s not so much that I don’t see how your idea would work, it’s just that it doesn’t factor in a lot about Twitter. For example, Twitter allows you to block people from seeing your updates – that doesn’t work if you’re throwing up a public feed to everyone regardless (sure there are ways around it but not inherent to twitter itself per se). @ replies are also broken in this model which for many are a crucial function of Twitter.

Ultimately you end up with a band-aid fix that ignores the fundamental problems Twitter is having and simply drags on the problem further. Why not fix part b the Message Processing where the problem actually is and move on instead of backwards ways to pretend to cover up the issue?

By: James

James — Sun, 25 May 2008 05:14:00 +0000

Chris,

By: Francesco

Francesco — Sun, 25 May 2008 03:46:52 +0000

Sometimes on the internet we are able to find some ideas that are very useful to us. They can be useful to us in respect of our business or our personal lives. These ideas help us a lot in our decision making process.

By: Francesco

Francesco — Sun, 25 May 2008 03:46:00 +0000