Ha, very cool! I was reading through and found my comment from then.
"Looks interesting. Any word on how it might tie into Odeo? The privacy options are key. I’d never want any of my text messages public… especially the drunken ones. Nick over at valleywag, might have a new gossip and scoop source. Overall though, cool site, with lots of room to grow if it can fix a few things."
Also, the "success of twitter" still really has to yet be proven. They get data through their free backend message queue, but can that be converted to cash?
No, twitter is already successful; its growth and reach are spectacular and it could be sold for quite a tidy sum. Was google not a success before adwords, when all it had done was revolutionize the way we sort content on the internet?
Sure. In that measure of success, it's wildly successful. But it's not a sure thing they'll be able to monetize it well.
Surely the value should be measured based on how valuable it is to each user * number of users. I'm not convinced that's as high as people think. Their retention rates aren't great at all.
But if the measure of success is 'can we hype and sell', then definitely twitter are already wildly successful and I'm sure they'll all do fine out of it. (Then whoever buys will probably completely kill it and the cycle will repeat).
"and a few select insiders were playing with the service at the Valleyschwag party in San Francisco last night." I enjoyed that, because I was at that party. Though not one of the "select insiders." However I'm tempted to think "a few select insiders" is actually Mike Arrington weasel words for "me."
I thought I was accusing him of narcissism. Namely that "influential insiders" is synonymous with his friends, or to reduce it to it's basics, himself.
I loved Twitter and signed up super early (summer 06) because it helped me keep in touch with my wife while she finished nursing school in San Diego and I was working my first SF job.
Reading the original review reminds me of how much I liked the original SMS-and-web-only focus. It leaves room for recent apps that focus on Twitter's original core mission of group texting, like Tatango:
This is classic. One thing I've learned from glimpses back at history like this is that the more off-the-cuff negative comments there are about a new idea, typically, the better. Simplicity is often met with disdain, mainly because people hold the belief that anything that becomes hugely successful must be insanely complicated. It pains us to see something so seemingly easy to come up with become such a hit.
I feel this way with a lot of successful startups today; a combination of jealousy and flippant denial. With Twitter, however, I remember being excited about it and joining really early on. I was mainly excited to hear what my friends were up to or thinking at any given moment since we've all spread out across the globe, but it wasn't until it became super popular that my less technical friends started joining and it became valuable. Now I love it.
Yeah, it was before TC comments jumped the shark. I don't know why they don't use a much more aggressive moderation policy; the toxic comments rub off on the rest of the site.
Oh please. Obviously I mean companies that give 2 shits about PR and are trying to hit home runs, not weekend projects.
Techcrunch is the most popular tech blog. If you don't care about it, you don't care about PR. Replace TC with Mashable, Engadget, Gizmodo, or whatever you like better, the point remains.
Outside of what is, despite impressions, a very small regional niche, TechCrunch the biggest source of PR and exposure, and in fact isn't even on the radar for a lot of folks.
One key to success is knowing your audience, and for many companies it's extremely unlikely that Arrington is a member of their audience. Those companies really shouldn't be worrying about going out of their way for sake of a blurb from him.
Missed my point. While TC gets on my nerves at times I like the site and they break news pretty well. I subscribe to their RSS - I'm not anti-TC.
My comment was trying to state that people can get too caught up in their own world. For me, that's TC/Mashable/ect. Building a successful business (which I admittedly haven't done yet) does not require being featured on TC (or other) blog. Does it help? Of course. But it's got a finite value which you have to make sure you don't overestimate.
"Looks interesting. Any word on how it might tie into Odeo? The privacy options are key. I’d never want any of my text messages public… especially the drunken ones. Nick over at valleywag, might have a new gossip and scoop source. Overall though, cool site, with lots of room to grow if it can fix a few things."