Ask HN: Is anybody working on open protocol like SMTP to replace Twitter? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is anybody working on open protocol like SMTP to replace Twitter?

1 pointsathish3161 comment

Twitter has scaling needs because it has reached beyond the scale of SMS and they are trying to store all the tweets. SMS networks don't have any scaling needs. Why aren't we thinking of SMS/SMTP/bittorrent like protocol to replace twitter?

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  > Twitter has scaling needs because it has reached beyond
  > the scale of SMS and they are trying to store all the
  > tweets. SMS networks don't have any scaling needs.

There is no particular reason why storage of short messages would be difficult to scale. Certainly it requires fewer resources than storing an equivalent number of emails, which is a problem long-solved by large email providers.

  > Why aren't we thinking of SMS/SMTP/bittorrent like
  > protocol to replace twitter?

There are already multiple protocols which would work well for a Twitter clone, XMPP and OStatus being the most prominent.

  > Ask HN: Is anybody working on open protocol like
  > SMTP/torrent to kill Twitter?

If you actually want to destroy Twitter, then your first challenge is to identify something you can do better, then convince hundreds of millions of people that their lives will be improved by migrating to your service.

The fact that you think Bittorrent would be an appropriate technical implementation of a short-message site, plus the use of "kill" in the title, makes me think that you do not have anywhere near the technical or business skills required to actually implement a competitive alternative to Twitter.

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