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A few months ago, I decided it is time to sell TwimeMachine. The code, 2 years old and ducktaped to hell, was breaking. Random errors kept slipping in. Instead of working to fix it, I rather wanted to just sell it and work on something new. Just as I started looking for buyers, the ad revenue and traffic shot up. I was rather busy and couldn’t fix it. Time went on and I had to relearn Django for test. Opting to kill two birds with one stone, I recoded TwimeMachine in Django.

As per usual, when I start a new app/web idea I try do it in a new language, with new architecture, whatever. Just something new I can learn. So, I opted to learn how Heroku works as well Amazon’s S3 for serving static files. It was quite a learning experience, learning how to set up virtual environments for Python and getting Heroku to work together.

So, what’s new? Feature-wise. Nothing new. But I have coded in such a way to easily add new features. I am probably going to add a once-off premium service in the feature that will enable users to download their tweets, read @mentions and read hashtags. When that will, I don’t know. Architecture-wise, it is running on Heroku and serving static files from S3. Will see how it pans out. I still have no clue how to determine when to scale to more dynos. Apparently one dyno can handle between 10-50 requests a second, which amount at 10 requests a second to about 864 000 requests a day. So far I’m well within that range.

Heroku offers 750 free hours, which if I am thinking about this correctly, amounts to 31 days of constant requests (at 1 request per second). That amounts to +- 2.6 million requests per month. My calculations might be wrong. If I am, please correct me. I’ve tried googling for these stats, but haven’t found any. As for S3, it should basically be free.

So currently, I’m running it all for free. Which is awesome! Lastly, I have set up opt-out following of @twimemachine. I get around 300-600 uniques a day. So hopefully I can build some traction from that into my Twitter account. Currently, nothing on TwimeMachine has any traction. There are no network effects or anything being stored (atm), so I’m relying on that to build up some value.

So, go to TwimeMachine and have fun reading your old tweets. And remember, it is not cool to live in your past.

If there are any errors, do let me know.

Cheers!

Just an update on what I’ve been busy with during August.

I joined github!

I’ve been following some projects (making little changes here and there). I’ve also uploaded SimpleRest, a simple JSON based PHP REST server. It’s not much, but it shows the flow when REST is used. I will probably add more to it in the future and probably make a blogpost about it. I like github. It really sparked my interest in open source. It is so easy to edit, commit and send a pull request to small open source projects. Someone cloned my small project and it is exciting to think people are using my code (even if they are just looking at it and think that it sucks). Expect more open source stuff from me in the future.

I wrote a blogpost on bandwidthblog, detailing OS X Lion’s interface and spitballing why Apple chose to make it look more like iOS. I also wrote a post on the MIH Medialab blog on the power of APIs.

For Cape Town’s creative week, there was a competition to  create an electronic remix of Cape Jazz (or Ghoema). I made a fun, upbeat groovy kwaito version. Go look on my soundcloud and dance with. The winners still has to be announced.

I recently updated my linkedin profile that has been stagnating. Add me on there.

In TwimeMachine news, it has been doing surprisingly well! It is now almost netting 150 000 pageviews a month! The ad revenue is rather good as well. Speculations on the rise in ad revenue is probably due to the site breaking often. The code is horrible and I haven’t had time to fix it up properly. In times of peak traffic, it kind of breaks. I’ve been looking at options to speed up development of TwimeMachine (un-breaking it, adding features, etc), one of them which includes selling it. If someone wants to take over the reigns and push it further, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Tweekly.fm is also continuing as usual, netting a few thousand users each month. Exciting things are happening. Stay tuned!

This is a continuation of the API blogging I’m trying to do. I like working with APIs (see Tweekly.fm and TwimeMachine) and I’m currently doing research on social network APIs.

The find of the day is Qwerly.

It’s tagline is: A data API for the social web. It recently ‘pivoted’ a month ago to provide only an API. In short they want to be the “DNS for the social web”. In other words, it is to be the database where social-profiles of people can be found. It started out where one could search for other profiles using a Twitter handle. During April however, the amount of API requests (30 million) far exceeded the 50 000 people visiting the main site. The idea is solid, a service which is lacking. Searching for other profiles isn’t available now, but duckduckgo (an alternative search engine) incorporated it into their search results.

As you can see, it fetched my linked,youtube,posterous, friendfeed and klout accounts. It didn’t find some of my other profiles, because I presume it is because I use different e-mails.

It only pivoted recently and is now almost a year old overall. I foresee definitely great things for them.

P.S. It didn’t find my last.fm account. Considering we (atTweekly.fm) have a db of Twitter+Last.fm connections, maybe they would want to start crawling that as well (need some help)?

So. I decided to add permalinks to TwimeMachine along with the ability to view other people’s old tweets.

It stumbled upon some hiccups while developing it, most notably being errors with Twitter’s API and one specific account. It seems that sometimes Twitter says an account has more tweets than there actually are, but I only found it with one account, wikileaks. Now, I’ll be hasty before I jump to conclusions (OMG CONSPIRACY!), Twitter has had errors with tweet counts for quite a while. I tested several accounts (about 20) and only wikileaks seemed to have that error.

Most accounts thus will show the proper amount of old tweets.

So, here is an example of the permalinks:

To read Justin Bieber’s old tweets, simply go to http://www.twimemachine.com/user/justinbieber. To read Lady Gaga’s old tweets, simply go to http://www.twimemachine.com/user/ladygaga. To read it, you must sign up (rate limiting).

As with each new iteration of development, errors might occur and new bugs might pop up. Don’t hesitate to let me know!

I’m going to out on a limb and say that the biggest issue online networks will have to face in the next few years is the increasing ‘noise’. Two of the largest social networks are already trying to maintain it. Twitter have created their lists and Facebook have also tried working with lists. Their newest approach is a step (tagging groups) in the right direction I think.

There are several problems related to the increasing noise. The first is of course, obviously, the increasing noise. There is just too much information being processed too fast for it to have any sustaining meaning. Remember when you only followed 20 people on Twitter? You engaged more meaningfully with the people you followed. The larger the noise, the less engaged you become to each person. A new photo-sharing startup, called Path,  is trying to solve this problem by limiting the amount of “friends” you can have to 50. Is this the best solution? I don’t think so. The internet is increasing the amount of weak connections we have. That is the power of it. Once a month, you might see something interesting from the outside social circle of acquaintances on the web. Twitter has tried solving it with lists. This has worked to some extent. I wouldn’t be using twitter as much if it wasn’t for lists. I follow 1000 people and at that number, my home feed is already overwhelming. But all 1000 people are interesting people that has the potential for me to share meaningful relationships with. The current system just doesn’t allow it. Facebook have also opted for ‘lists’, but data showed that no-one actually uses it. The problem with the list method is that people only start using it once their stream becomes unmanageable. At that time it is too much effort to go back through all your contacts and define them to lists.

Facebook opted for an inventive new system with the new groups. The user tags people who they think should be involved in a group. There is saying that you are defined by the company you keep. You don’t have to do anything to be “involved” on Facebook. You just need an account. You are tagged in photos and added to groups, because to an extent your social circle does define who you are.

As life continues, you meet new people. In the past you progressed naturally through social circles: highschool friends went their way; college friends went their way; work friends went their way. But with Facebook all of them are added to the same stream, having mostly the same importance/priority. When I leave university in a few years, I’ll meet new people and add them to Facebook. I have once went back to Facebook and deleted ‘friends’ I have no interest in. How many people will do this? How many people will instead just stop using Facebook because of a convoluted stream?

The future of social networking will lie in the hands of the social network that will show you the information you want to see. Will it be a machine/algorithm based solution or a user imposed solution? Are we capable of maintaining a large social stream? Is it a greater psychological (even physiological) issue?

I’d like to think that online networks will follow the same trend as the food industry. People will want to go back to making the most of their local connections (compared to people going back to healthy, locally produced, organic food). How many people actually know their neighbour? We are global citizens, but we still thrive locally. You aren’t going to get a beer with Rob 1000km away from you. It is going to be an interesting mindshift!

So, Evan Williams recently stated that Twitter will reach 1 billion users.

All I’m going to spew here are my thoughts. If you disagree, please do and tell me what you think.

I think people use Twitter for 3 reasons? Narcissism, watered-down RSS reading and marketing. I’m not going to lie, I use Twitter for all the above. I sometimes like saying what I’m doing. It is cathartic to share great and sad moments with people who might or might not care. I’m not going to spew everything I feel and do, but only the noteworthy things I’d want to share. My rule is: if I want to tell my real-life friends, I’d say it on Twitter. Having breakfast is not news. I use it follow interesting links people might post (watered-down RSS reading) and marketing my personal projects.

If you don’t fall into that 3 categories, you don’t usually stay on Twitter. You will join it, Twitter being a “buzzword”, but then like so many people, only post a few statuses and never come back.

I contend that the social aspect arises from the 3 main uses. In other words, the social relationships I have formed from Twitter was a result of having other goals in mind. Unlike Facebook, I think people don’t join Twitter to be social. The inherent social structure isn’t that intuitive. The classic example is when people say: “So it is like Facebook, but just status updates? Why would I want to join?”

To me, Facebook is my real life social graph put online. Twitter allows me to create a totally new online graph that starts online and feeds into real life (for whatever purpose). I guess it depends how you use Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is for strengthening the current relationships I have. Twitter is for finding new connections (whether I want to share my breakfast or market my projects). I don’t post my blogs on Facebook, because I don’t think my friends will want to read it. I post it on Twitter, because I believe the people that follow me might find the subject matter interesting or just like consuming information.

So to come back to my question. Will Twitter reach 1 billion users? Probably. I’m more inclined to say that it won’t. Hosts of people will still come to join based on curiosity and talk. Of these, some will stay, finding the purpose they use it for (sharing their music, following celebrities, following news accounts, blabbing about their breakfast, etc). I still feel that Twitter’s use is still too ambiguous for late adopters and laggards to get on the bandwagon. The ephemeral nature of tweets is also a problem. Facebook stores the “actions” into an easy to dissolve manner: photos are easily browsable, the feed easily readable. If you see my Facebook profile, you’ll pretty much know what I’m on about. If a person arrives on my Twitter profile, finds I only have @replies to my followers in my stream, it will be uninteresting. There is no summation of what I tweet about generally (except the bio) and why I should be followed. Twitter being a service where it is focused on accruing new connections (in my opinion), still falls behind in that regard.

They knew about this and added the “Who to Follow” feature. Sure, thanks! But why? Tell my why I would want to follow said person. Facebook lives on current social graphs, so they don’t really have this problem. I meet someone, I add them on Facebook. If Twitter can make sure the right people, follow the right people, it will explode. If I join and they take my location and interests (3 simple tags even) and suggest people to follow in my hometown I might not know. Great! I can create new connections! Twitter have the advantage that following someone is more socially accepted than friending someone you don’t know on Facebook.

The other problem, and I think this is also the case with Facebook, is the size of streams. I think the golden 150 number still holds true for online connections (perhaps maybe more as it is more manageable). I follow 1100 people. At this low number, my feed is unreadable. I can’t digest the information, before the new information appears. I have thus created lists to follow the people I really want to read depending on occasions and location. The problem with this is that people only start doing lists once their feed becomes unmanageable. It is way too much of  a mission to go back and all the people I follow to lists!

Much rambling, I digress. What do you think?