@kev, there is nothing stopping them. It's the wild west with no mountain ranges to pass over to kill off the weak.
jzip
· 11 months ago
Jeez. To think I got fed up with Twinkle when they decided rotating my phone was a good reason to show the world map of tweets. That was bad, but this is worse.
Arshad
· 11 months ago
So glad there's no @snmyname on twinkle. Maybe I better reserve it before I start getting twinkle spam
Els
· 11 months ago
@ Arshad - that was my idea too, but since I don't have an iPhone, it seems I can't even do that.
Tantek
· 10 months ago
This explains a lot, fellow one letter Twitter user.
joshuakaufman
· 10 months ago
So what you're saying, in short, is that if any other service allows @username to reply/demark/notify users on that service, they shouldn't be publishing those updates to Twitter.
I like Twitter, but to play the devil's advocate for a moment: you're barking up the wrong tree. Just because Twitter was first and currently has the largest number of users, does that mean that everyone else who came after them is doing it wrong? @username syntax is quickly becoming a standard for notifying/demarking users on a service. Publishing to Twitter is quickly becoming a standard for communicating social services activity.
Yes, Twinkle hijacks Twitter usernames. But yes, it could happen on any other social network, and not just a social network like Twinkle that mimics Twitter.
If there's one thing that's definitely broken here, it's the design of Twitter @username replies. If they didn't want usernames to be hijacked, they shouldn't have allowed publishing to Twitter via their API.
kevnull
· 10 months ago
If you're going to use a channel, you should respect that namespace, yes. While @ is a standard, if I say @joshuakaufman here on my blog, it's fine but it shouldn't post to Twitter. Twitter wasn't "first" in using @'s either. The problem isn't using @ in general, it's using @ on Twitter specifically.
Frankly, it's not about whether Twitter should have an API. It doesn't even benefit Twinkle or anyone else to have an overlapping namespace on the same channel.
All Comments
I like Twitter, but to play the devil's advocate for a moment: you're barking up the wrong tree. Just because Twitter was first and currently has the largest number of users, does that mean that everyone else who came after them is doing it wrong? @username syntax is quickly becoming a standard for notifying/demarking users on a service. Publishing to Twitter is quickly becoming a standard for communicating social services activity.
Yes, Twinkle hijacks Twitter usernames. But yes, it could happen on any other social network, and not just a social network like Twinkle that mimics Twitter.
If there's one thing that's definitely broken here, it's the design of Twitter @username replies. If they didn't want usernames to be hijacked, they shouldn't have allowed publishing to Twitter via their API.
Frankly, it's not about whether Twitter should have an API. It doesn't even benefit Twinkle or anyone else to have an overlapping namespace on the same channel.