Shooting at Bubbles - Latest Comments in Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

moah — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:09:50 -0000

Twitter didnt exactly abandon channels, they just called them "hashtags". So instead of doing a /join #topic to see all messages related to the topic, in twitter you search for the hashtag, and get back a list of tweets resembling a irc channel.

>It completely killed the +ops crap that made IRC get on your nerves
>after a while.

How are you gonna fight hashtag-based spam and abuse in Twitter without a op? When you search for a hashtag (i.e. when you join a twitter channel) everybody has to filter out spam and abuse tweets themselves. Sometimes it isnt bad to have an op for a certain channel/topic/hasttag.

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

engtech — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:58:13 -0000

one big disagreement: twitter's value add wasn't putting HTML around IRC.

It was abandoning channels and letting everyone control who they are individually listening to.

It completely killed the +ops crap that made IRC get on your nerves after a while.

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

Daryl Tay — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:57:59 -0000

Hi Steven,

I don't usually post my own links in comments, but just thought I'd let you know I had the same thoughts that Twitter's strength is that it's like IRC (http://uniquefrequency.word... and a second post saying just because that's it's strength, doesn't mean it should be used exactly like IRC (http://uniquefrequency.word.... let me know what you think!

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

StevenHodson — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:19:03 -0000

well considering that the IRC protocal has been around since the very
beginning of computers talking to each other over 2400 baud modems I think
that it could be consider stable or as stable as the IRC networks running
over them.

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:14:28 -0000

That might be a pretty good thing if IRC is technically superior and more stable.

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

StevenHodson — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:00:03 -0000

I think that the only reason that it might capture more of a chat room type
of feeling is the interface. I was talking with the author of AdiIRC about
this as well and he pretty well agreed that IRC doesn't see the adoption
that might deserve among regular users because of its generally accepted
interface. While it might appeal to the geeky end of the spectrum the
"language" used in its commands and related things is to technical.

An example of this is with Twitter you can DM to send a private msg to a
specific user. In IRC you can either memo them (if supported by the network)
or you can query them for a private conversation. Comparing the two methods
obviously the DM is simpler and easier to understand.

My opinion is that if a very good developer sat down with Twitter / Pownce /
Jaiku etc as examples and redesigned both the "language" used in IRC clients
as well as the message display we could probably see an uptake in IRC.

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:08:21 -0000

I tend to look at Twitter from a different perspective. I don't really care much about the underlying technology of Twitter, even though it sometimes appears that the site will collapse at any moment. (Yes, I'm exaggerating)

I think you are correct in drawing the comparison to IRC, but Twitter somehow manages to capture more of a chat room feeling that I remember being present in IRC.

I think it's more of a social club, which I'll be writing about tomorrow.

Re: Twitter: IRC with a new shade of lipstick

Robert Seidman — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:04:07 -0000

"The only thing that Twitter has done is moved the concept of IRC to an easily beautified user interface of HTML."

Sometimes it doesn't take very much, especially if nobody else did the "nothing much" until you! This "only thing" is the reason Twitter has had more success than other stuff (ranging from Pownce to IRC).