[Once in a while there comes a time to write a post unrelated to VoIP. Or anything else in this blog for that matter. The sole purpose of the post is to attract readers that might find it amusing enough to stay around a bit - or god forbid subscribe to the blog in question.
Guess what? You are now reading such a post.]
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What if Microsoft was the company behind the service we all call Twitter?
Every tweet would be a maximum of 140 characters, but would need to download a 2Mb message, containing various XML markups and a ton of security.
You know – you would be able to change the font of your tweet. And the size of it. And the color. Set it to bold. Or italicize it. That kind of tweaking takes space.
Add to that encryption for privacy concerns, authentication, server signatures, etc.
You would be readying yourself for Twitter 2010
And just when you got used to the way twitter handles them RT messages.
Oh, and it will require Silverlight, .NET, ActiveX, and Internet Explorer 9 to read, of course.
They would have come up with a new SDK technology once a year
Remember the fact that you’re getting ready for Twitter 2010? So if you are a developer, that change in retweets might change the application you’ve written for twitter.
You would have to sign an EULA for each tweet you send out
You know, saying that the tweet you send is up to you, no one else is responsible for it, even if it kills your machine, or the machine of the people receiving it.
And one for each tweet you want to read, of course.
Oh – what’s that you say? Twitter just changed their terms of service?
You would have to reset your twitter client EVERY day
Some of us actually HAVE to do that, since their twitter clients gobble up memory relentlessly without giving it back to the community: I used to close my tweetdeck and reopen it about twice a day a few versions back.
Image from Andy Brudtkuhl’s blog
You would have to get used to “the blue tweet of death”
Also known as a Fail Whale in some cultures.
The new BSOD? Left: lauterhaus Right: majortk
You couldn’t use Twitter on your Mac
Or you could. Only it would be an older version of Twitter with the possibility of stopping support at any time.
You could only use Windows Media Player to view videos tweeted
While that might not be true, there has been some complaints about twitter not playing nice with open standards.
Nagging administration again…
- I’d like to thank Sagee for supplying some of the “what if” answers above.
- I originally wanted to write a post titled “What If Cisco Acquired Tandberg”, but most of the blogs out there beat me to it.
- You’re more than invited to subscribe to this blog or to our blog network if VoIP interests you.
- UPDATE: Sagee also wrote his own version – What If Twitter Developed Video Conferencing?
Oh! And if I missed some, feel free to comment below and add your own!
1. The twitter URL would have been http://www.twitter.com/askdjfha;sdkjfh@#$@#$,msdfasdf.asp/read
2. Twitter name would have been changed to Real Time Two Way Conversation Initiative Dev Center 2011
3. The interface would have been radioactive green
I’m sorry that others beat you to the punch on the Cisco/Tandberg spoof, but I’m so glad that such an entertaining post could come out of it.
People would be writing spoofs “what if google developed twitter”
There would be a chunk of screen at the bottom dedicated to promoting msnbc’s latest media whore gossip.Inspite of a thousand other options, the ad cant be turned off.
Each upgrade (and many of the weekly security patches) would reset all your options to the defaults.
You would automatically be forced to follow anyone in your address book, or that you had accidentally befriended on myspace. You can unfollow them, but like the other options they will keep coming back after each upgrade.
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Funny, but some of your points are cheap shots:
- MS has lots and lots of web properties, all of which work just fine in any modern browser on any OS.
- Given Twitter’s scale & reliability problems it is quite a stretch to suggest that reliability would be worse if MS ran it.
How about doing one on what if Apple had invented Twitter?
Clippy would pop up to offer tweeting assistance, no matter how you tried to hack him away.
It would be called “Windows Live Message Service”.
Your screen would go black and a window would pop up asking if you’re really really sure you want to send each and every message. “No really, are you sure?”
There would be official home launch parties for every update (with 9 napkins per party)!
You’d be required to login with your Windows Live account to tweet.
You’d be able to buy Twitter Pro which allows for 280 characters.
There would be attempts to file Microsoft Twitter 2010 as a W3C standard
To all those above, and those to come: they make more money than you; you’re probably using their software or service somewhere in your life; they’re an easy target; you’re all correct in what you say, but refer to my first point.
Ad infinitum
And I hate myself for pointing all that out.
Well said!
Guys, thank you all for the great ideas – keep’em coming!
Just to make it clear – this post is a cheap jab intended for the fun of it – nothing more. RADVISION (where I work) is actually a Microsoft “development house” – most of our stuff are developed on MSFT technology and then ported elsewhere. They make great products as a company, which makes them, well… unpopular by some.
@Jamie – with Apple it would have been a lot worse. Probably with issues dealing with religion, fanaticism and no free will.
@Jim – they sure do make more money than I do – just the more reason make the prank
@Elyon – I guess Google developing twitter would have made it based on non-intrusive ads that take 10 characters of every fifth message
Hope you had fun here – my colleague Sagee has a great post scheduled for next week that will be even funnier, so stay tuned!
haha.. this is funny.
Funny and I am much impressed with the “EULA” one
this is lame.
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You had a great opportunity to make a brilliant post and probably get some more blog subscribers. I would be one of those if I had found that you not only excelled technically but that you also had a sense of humor. Unfortunately your sense of humor sucks and what could had been a real exercise of of imagination just dragged into something boring.
If Microsoft had invented Twitter, we would not know about it: It would be controlling Balmer’s bathrooom and tweeting all available data to his R&D department.
Don’t forget Clippy popping up with “It looks like you’re trying to post something interesting. Would you like some help making it more inane?”
@Jim – yes, they make more money but that´s only due to the lack of competition especially in the end-user business in the last decades. But alternatives are strong and it´s the competition that offers cutting edge products and is developing tomorrows standards. What MS has done and still is doing is copying concepts. They are always one step behind because they rest on their market share. Even being the first in sales figures let´s them stand in 2nd or 3rd row when it comes to rate products.
I love this blog! Very entertaining! I am an educator and a twitter user. If Twitter was created my MS, teachers would have no idea what it was and there would be full day inservices scheduled to try to get a handle on what it really is, including each and every tool and trick inside Twitter without any focus on potential applications of Twitter. Thankfully it isn’t and Twitter is spreading by word of mouth. it is easy, free, and you don’t need an inservice to jump in and learn something new!
Nice post…
We are so glad that twitter has been invented by neither MS nor Apple…
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At least I’m not the only one with Tweetdeck memory issues, I just can’t leaving it running more than a couple hours.