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Would a Nonprofit Twitter Clone Work?

Ricardo N Feliciano on October 24, 2018

Many people have said that Facebook has gotten so big it should be considered a public utility. I think this applies much more so to Twitter give...
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Ricardo N Feliciano

Social networks gain users with having more users than other social networks, not with making their code public.

You're arguing against a different point, not one that I made in my post. I don't believe an open source clone of Twitter is the solution. My point is more about the maintainer of the software being a nonprofit or foundation. Not an individual or for-profit business.

Also, as I mentioned in my reply to generaltso, Mastodon (which I think is a cool piece of software) is not a Twitter clone. Though, I believe the founder said the general UI is inspired by Tweetdeck specifically.

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Joe Hobot • Edited

Back in the days when Twitter started , there was also a twitter like competitor called Plurk and one other (forgot the name) , Twitter took off while plurk did not make its name although imo was a bit better platform if you ask me. What differentiate Twitter was the tech people and marketing, and then it took off on its own. (Been on twitter since 2007)

Edit: The major difference was also Twitter released API where Plurk did not, and that helped others to build apps and promote Twitter with their iOS/Android apps.

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Ricardo N Feliciano

Interesting, thanks.

API support is very important in today's world. I think the lack of one is one of the reasons Google+ failed.

It's also one of the things worrying me about Twitter now. They're tightening access to it more and more, cutting off the developer community that helped them gain the market penetration they now enjoy.

 
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Ricardo N Feliciano

People are upset with Twitter. You can see that by the crazy amount of tweets directed towards Jack Dorsey. People are actually leaving (who knows for how long) Facebook but that's a whole different shit show.

What's lost? We're having a conversation.

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dayvonjersen

My first thing that comes to mind when reading this is Mastodon and its surrounding "fediverse". It's not an exact pixel-for-pixel carbon copy of twitter but it does have all the same core functionality and a large, active user base. Plus it's open source. Why not start there?

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Ricardo N Feliciano

Mastodon is what I thought of when I mentioned point #2. It's not a Twitter clone but also, I think the fact that it's federated is what will prevent it from ever becoming the next Twitter.

I'm not against federation. In fact, from a technical perspective, I'm fascinated by them. Federation for software such as NextCloud works very well and should be used when needed. I don't believe it can work for social media in a way that will ever get mass adoption.

 
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Ricardo N Feliciano

What are your points? Why not?

 
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Nick Karnik

I suppose you may have a better chance at success creating a domain specific twitter clone.

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Ricardo N Feliciano

Maybe. Discord came out with a clear target demographic gamers and that seems to have worked well for them.

To be clear, this is not something that I'd necessarily do, I was curious on people's' thoughts. This would be a large undertaking. Product philosophy-wise, I wonder if it would work.

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Boris Jamot ✊ /

People are dumb, irresponsible and selfish. Companies like Twitter and Facebook have a long and great future.