DISQUS

playerx · 7 months ago

for the URL's any chance you can ditch the ".html" part, and have them be 5 characters shorter?

curtisschweitzer · 7 months ago

Twitter's conversation feature is supposedly one of its strengths, but precisely for the reasons you've mentioned it doesn't always work, or provide the necessary features to engender any kind of helpful debate. (Debating on twitter feels like trying to find your way in a dark room while wearing sunglasses). Good call on identifying and attempting a solution for a thorny problem.

dave · 7 months ago

I decided finally yesterday to drop everything and just do this when a thorny ethical subject came up on Twitter and I couldn't express even one part of the matter in 140 chars. I've been hitting this wall since the beginning. You break the idea up into segments, but when you post the second part, someone asks you what you're talking about (that was in the first post). It can't continue like this. I think the Twitter guys are wrong about 140 chars. The limit *may* have been the magic that helped it boot up, but it can't continue to grow like this. Imho.

Igniter · 7 months ago

140 characters is still essential for SMS compatibility which is a core attribute of the medium and important to the global and public benefit potential. What you just did is, I think a good crack at a solution. A macro-layer that can weave around micromessages. I also think you could evolve this into real-time algae blooms... conversation clouds based on a micro-message thread that can intensify the conversation and just as easily disipate when the meomentum goes. Much less static than creating groups/discussion lists. The other key is that this does not further the fracturing of the medium and the web. These need to be openly transferrable objects.

curtisschweitzer · 7 months ago

I'm interested to see if we can't just kill off SMS as web access becomes more and more ubiquitous on phones. If your phone is just a pipe, why 140 characters? 160 characters? Why can't I write 5 GB of text if I want to? SMS is great *now*, but in the future I think its dominance is probably going to wane significantly.

Igniter · 7 months ago

That may well happen but it's a ways out. This medium is practical and
usable in the current configuration - building services on top of the
140base keeps the medium open and still fills the need for longer length
messaging.

AndrewBurton · 7 months ago

I think SMS won't go away for a while. Disposable phones, the $20~40 kind you get at Wal-Mart, are still locked into WAP for the web and SMS for texting. At least the little Motorola I bought last year is, I haven't got this year's model. I would think making Twitter compatible with the cheap phones kids and college students use now would lock-in (so to speak) those users a few years down the road when they have jobs and can afford better phones. That's my guess anyway.

sull · 7 months ago

SMS is relevant and it's how it all began as logging and sharing Mobile Status Updates... but now most people are using internet access in conjunction with micro-messaging.... but SMS is still necessary when no net connection is available. and the same applies to email.... as you can send an email from your phone same as you would send an SMS (in most cases).

it's just that it is now realized that twitter and the micro-messaging phenomena does not depend on SMS. its just the mobile fallback now. most new users are using the web or desktop clients. so limiting people who are not concerned with mobile messaging limits may not make sense as this plays out. but then there is the risk of shifting away from micro-messaging and into longer form messaging (blogging?). at some point.... it may begin to not make sense anymore. especially if google rolls out real-time search... then your own blog can be just as useful as a twitter stream with some added relationship hooks.

sull · 7 months ago

the 140char limit (SMS) can always be a graceful fallback but we might see intuitive ways direct from twitter to have extended messages that can go beyond this limit... or have the first 140chars be able to transmit via SMS and the rest available on the web and client apps (optionally).

but at the same time, if you have your own site you can shift the conversation there. if you could easily embed a widget with the twitter thread then that helps to keep evereything in context. i suppose this is what google wave can tackle. twitter need not be the solution for long-form content. but they could provide such solutions if it makes sense to do so. and it might.

zackatoustra · 7 months ago

"My next sub-project is to create a bookmarklet that makes it super-easy for anyone to start a comment thread on any Twitter post they like."

Isn't that what the Feedly Minibar (small sharing toolbar located at the bottom of web pages) makes possible?
It indicates any FriendFeed conversation going on about the current page. Pretty useful to catch other friendfeeder's thoughts on a subject.

dsims · 7 months ago

I have not found a better place to express and discover ideas (and have a conversation around them) than FriendFeed.
In fact, your tweet about Arrington already has a ton of comments on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/davew/a16f0e12/mike-arrin...
Any particular reason why you don't want to leverage FF more?

dave · 7 months ago

Why would I want to "leverage" FF over Disqus?

The Disqus guys respond to every email I send them, when I hit a bug, they fix it. When I hit a limit in their system they give me a workaround. They treat me great, the FF guys -- well they ripped up the pavement a month ago and threw a bunch of features out the window, ones that I depended on. So that doesn't bode well for the future -- will they do it again?

When there's choice, and when people work to help you accomplish what you want to, you go with them.

Manu J · 7 months ago

Which features did FF throw out of the window ? Just curious.

dave · 7 months ago

Not my place to list them. I'm sure they're aware of what features they no
longer support. Ask the company. It is their job to support their users.

Manu J · 7 months ago

I don't even know how to ask the company :). But even if I knew it would be easier to ask, will you bring back/support X than "hey, what are the features dropped in new friendfeed".

The company may be aware of what features they dropped. I asked only for my awareness. I'm a friendfeed(not heavy) user but didn't notice any features being dropped. Hence the curiosity.

BillSeitz · 6 months ago

Note that FriendFeed can bring in your Disqus posts as well as tweets. Which isn't the same thing as what you're suggesting, but another spin...

dave · 6 months ago

FriendFeed. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping and it'll do your taxes
too. :-)

Charles · 7 months ago

Try tinycrowd.com to send a tweet with more than 140 characters. Subject and a URL gets tweeted. The link gives the rest of your comment to the user, embed content, etc.

jamtoday · 7 months ago

#Chutzpah -- "The big announcement is Google Wave. How much you want to bet in 5 years it'll be as famous as OpenDoc is today."

dave · 7 months ago

You think I have chutzpah or they do? :-)

Micah Alpern · 7 months ago

Google Wave == Groove?

Ray Ozzie must be stewing today.

dave · 7 months ago

Quite possibly.

We need a name for this kind of software.

Something big designed to satisfy a company's lust for world domination,
with absolutely no chance of achieving it.

AndrewBurton · 7 months ago

I thought that word for that was "Enterprise Solution."

Bas · 7 months ago

How about FriendFeed?

sull · 7 months ago

hey dave. here is what i do and at least a few others...
a year ago i created http://tweetshots.com which is a bookmarklet.
it takes a screenshot of a tweet and lets you share it elsewhere with an emphasis on tumblr integration.

so, tweetshots bookmarklet + tumblr + disqus works well for what you are interested in.
an example and entertaining site that is doing this combo is:

http://twitterhallofshame.com

or a post on my tumblr.... http://sull.outputs.it/post/114377865
(notice links in tweet are extracted and tweetshot is clickable to tweet permalink)

i also had built an area on tweetshots.com that listed ALL tweetshots with disqus but decided not to focus on that central approach.
i also experimented with audio comments to tweets and tweet slideshows with audio for presentations.

just thought my past experiment(s) might be of interest to you since it is the "coral reef" approach as well. i also like immortalizing tweets by via screenshots and being able to see some of the users background design around the tweet. social artifacts.

cheers,

@sull

David Sanger · 6 months ago

Why not use the unique Tweet ID as part of your URL?

Arrignton's tweet was http://twitter.com/arrington/status/1945677741 so make the comments thread be http://twdsc.us/1945677741

Thus each tweet can spawn a unique comments thread

dave · 6 months ago

Because I want it to be a static site, not dynamic. :-)

Tony Buser · 6 months ago

Why you're not using the tweet id was my first thought too. You know... a site can be static without having to end in .html... catch the 404 not found and generate a static index.html. You lose 4 characters, but over time that wouldn't be the case.

fredwilson · 6 months ago

i'm late to the party as usual dave, but i love this. can't wait to start using it.