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Ask HN: Is there space for a fresh Twitter-like platform?

3 pointsby benedictlewisabout 8 years ago
With Twitter stocks at record lows, and a constant display of ineptitude from executives, is there space for a similar platform?<p>What made Twitter great in it&#x27;s infancy was the developer platform support, which has all but disappeared (interestingly, Instagram seems to be going the same way with it&#x27;s sandboxed mode).<p>As Snapchat has illustrated time and time again, there is a definite market for close-circle sharing, particularly among 18-25 year olds. Facebook is no longer cool, so what&#x27;s next? Snapchat is ideal for short-term communication, but there seems to be nothing between permanent storage in Facebook&#x27;s datacenters and 24h expiration on Snapchat.<p>If a new competitor were to launch, from my perspective it would need to focus on:<p>1) Strong (and on-going) developer support 2) Close-circle sharing 3) Medium-term storage<p>Any thoughts?

1 comment

Mk-0about 8 years ago
There&#x27;s always space.<p>There have been countless attempts by new platforms to take over Facebook, Twitter, etc, but they always fail because 90% of users are so glued to what they already know. They don&#x27;t want to join a network that all their contacts aren&#x27;t already on. Additionally, a good portion of said users also don&#x27;t mind ads or privacy invasion, so those aspects of new platforms only ever seem to appeal to users who know a thing or two about infosec.<p>For what it&#x27;s worth, I&#x27;m no longer a Twitter user, but when I was I&#x27;d go through my activity each month or so and delete the majority of my tweets, retweets, and likes. Sure, they&#x27;re still stored server-side, but it just reminds me how much I wish a platform could exist with little to no retention, like you said. Maybe a (transparent) purging of data regularly? Way too much to ask for, but it&#x27;s a novel thought.