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Palringo is rocking away; still a Tweet killer

Started by Ewan · 8 months ago

If you haven’t taken a look at Palringo recently, you should. Way back at the beginning of 2008, we took a close look at the mobile instant messaging service and thought it had the basics in place to make it a must-have, top-of-the-pack service offering. We had some real conce ... Continue reading »

13 comments

  • TerenceEden

    8 months ago

    "You want the ability to take a pic and send it into one of your lifestreams and have folk be able to see it immediately. That’s what Palringo will do"

    Interestingly, that's one of the main reasons I no longer use www.twitter.com. I use the mobile sites like dabr.co.uk and twitstat which show images in line and un-shorten URLs.
    reply
  • barneyc

    8 months ago

    Palringo is by no means a "Twitter killer" the two are fundamentally different. You all know my views on Palringo - it's is a wicked instant messenger. The fact that Twitter allows for IM like functionality belies it's actual power. Twitter is a hardcore messaging platform, designed to support third party services.
    reply
  • DanLane

    8 months ago

    Now that Twitter has no IM and no SMS it means there is no usable interface for me. I'm not running another app just for twitter. They need to architect their stuff properly or just fuck off.
    reply
  • Ben Smith

    8 months ago

    Dan, Dan... so very angry... :-)
    reply
  • Ewan

    8 months ago

    Can't wait 'til we unleash him...

    2008/10/23 Disqus <>
    reply
  • barneyc

    8 months ago

    It's why we love him
    reply
  • barneyc

    8 months ago

    Not sure it's worth the effort trying to reason this out but hell let's give it a go...

    From the conversations I've had over the last couple of years it is apparent that Twitter was designed to provide a messaging platform for applications/services - the first use case of which was Twitter as we know it, a social IM if you like. Twitter have grown the service (IM) to the point where it has stress tested the infrastructure to and beyond breaking point, gone back and rearchitected / fixed / tweaked / whatever so as to get things as robust, stable and scalable as possible.

    I don't think the guys there ever anticipated the platform's primary use as the IM it essentially is, rather as a service orientated message routing platform with cool things like source based routing built into the syntax.

    Now that isn't to say that i) the current interface is anything but crap, or ii) that A.N.Other company cannot utilise the platform to build a better service.

    To that end applications like Tweetdeck go a long way to solving the first problem of UX.

    I'm by no mean qualified to critique Twitter's technical architecture or protocols but looking at it as an ecosystem enabling messaging platform I reckon it has legs in it yet.
    reply
  • DanLane

    8 months ago

    I'm not convinced, Barney.

    What was described is XMPP, a messaging platform for applications or services that just happens to be really good at IM. If Twitter had been built on top of an existing XMPP platform it probably wouldn't have had so many issues later in life.

    I have intimate knowledge of the Odeo platform that these guys built before Twitter and that had some really shoddy architecture! Given it's performance I'd take an educated guess that Twitter started out as a similar collection of hacks and hasn't fared well since.

    It's a shame that so many people still use Twitter, it's userbase is it's only strong point! If they all moved to Jaiku (which, admittedly has had it's own share of growing pains but has restored SMS and IM functionality) we'd all be much better off!
    reply
  • barneyc

    8 months ago

    Dan - I'm not going to defend Twitters choice of protocol or server architecture. To be honest the underlying protocol doesn't / shouldn't matter as long as it lays on top of HTTP. If you ignore the rather flaky social tool that is Twitter and look at the concept of building a simple messaging platform with routing, an open api and the ability for it to be utilised for social and application messaging then Twitter isn't bad.

    Does that mean they were right to go off and try to reinvent the wheel - no, IMHO they should have really gone down the Jabber route and laid source based routing on top.

    And you know I prefer Jaiku (as a social tool) right?
    reply
  • Mac Morrison

    8 months ago

    twitter is about as hardcore a platform as a bridge of flumps.

    its lovely - but its over capacity/down half the time
    it cant cope with conversations/comments
    and its not great at extending beyond pure html devices.

    i still love it - but its not a do it all thing.
    reply
  • barneyc

    8 months ago

    Okay - again let's separate out Twitter into the two core 'things'

    The social application - you're right it doesn't support threading, has some scaling problems

    The platform - is more than capable of supporting threading, extends brilliantly using HTTP

    I think the real problem is that so many people see Twitter as a single (and limited) use application, not a demonstration of how an application can be built over a messaging platform.
    reply
  • digitalman333

    8 months ago

    The IQ constellation of the six people.
    There is always some funny discussion on www.dvdsetshop.com. Here is another one.
    Rachel
    Joey
    Monica
    Phoebe
    Ross
    Chandler
    reply
  • digitalman333

    8 months ago

    The IQ constellation of the six people.
    There is always some funny discussion on www.dvdsetshop.com. Here is another one.
    Rachel
    Joey
    Monica
    Phoebe
    Ross
    Chandler
    reply

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