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0 pointstalmand10y ago0 comments

What do you mean? I fully believe that a competent developer could sit down and make something like Twitter in a weekend. Especially since the concept and what to do with it is already on display for them to copy.

Now, to create a Twitter clone in a weekend when there's no Twitter to go by? Nope.

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davidcgl10y ago

If you boil down the entirety of Twitter into just a CRUD app that allows you to post 140 characters at a time, then yes, you can make that in a weekend.

Well, how about recommended posts / people to follow (ML)? Sponsored posts with a buy button (3rd part integration)? Growth and metrics (data analytics)? A software product is never just about pixels on the screen; and trivializing the engineering effort behind it is insulting to Twitter employees, some of whom are brilliant engineers I know.

talmandOP10y ago

I think you misunderstand my point. Your first sentence is similar to what I'm saying. Your second part is not what I'm saying.

nkohari10y ago

You could create something that looks like Twitter, but you couldn't create Twitter. Ignoring the network effects and scale that Twitter has is ignoring its primary value.

talmandOP10y ago

That's my point.

nkohari10y ago

It's hard for me to get that from what you wrote. It seemed that your point was more that the existence of Twitter means it's easy to reproduce it, but before Twitter, it was difficult to envision a site like Twitter.

My counterpoint is that it's not actually the idea that's interesting, it's the fact that they've convinced lots of people to use it, and have built a system powerful enough to support that scale.

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0 pointstalmand10y ago0 comments

Now, to create a Twitter clone in a weekend when there's no Twitter to go by? Nope.

0 comments

davidcgl10y ago

If you boil down the entirety of Twitter into just a CRUD app that allows you to post 140 characters at a time, then yes, you can make that in a weekend.

talmandOP10y ago

I think you misunderstand my point. Your first sentence is similar to what I'm saying. Your second part is not what I'm saying.

nkohari10y ago

You could create something that looks like Twitter, but you couldn't create Twitter. Ignoring the network effects and scale that Twitter has is ignoring its primary value.

talmandOP10y ago

That's my point.

nkohari10y ago

My counterpoint is that it's not actually the idea that's interesting, it's the fact that they've convinced lots of people to use it, and have built a system powerful enough to support that scale.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse