1. I think Twitter is great and want to see it succeed. I learn a ton on here.
2. I want to see subscription models work for social networks, we're also attempting this on @tumblr.
3. I believe in collegially supporting competitors. We're fellow travelers and it's not zero-sum.
4. I spend at least 30 min on this site a day, and I can afford $8/mo. That's like $0.50 an hour. It's a great deal.
5. The #blocktheblue protest doesn't make sense. What's success look like: Twitter out of business?
If you want to block me for supporting a site that provides a ton of utility to me every day, I'm actually very okay with that.
I (now) know how hard it is to run a social network if your name doesn't rhyme with feta. Actually for feta-rhymers as well. (Cheesy, I know.)
One more I forgot:
6. I was actually subscribed to Blue before! And somehow lost my subscription in some bug on their side. So I'm also just re-activating a subscription I had before.
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This is why, for better and worse, @WordPress and other open source platforms are the only thing that give you true freedom. They can take away your ISP, but the code is public. Your data is perfectly portable. So freedom of speech understood as freedom to publish is there.
Now freedom of speech understood as freedom of distribution will never truly exist as long as there are intermediaries where you don't control the code, including telecoms (bandwidth and phone numbers), Gmail, supply chains, etc.
Your best bet is to pick a distribution medium that gives you portability of your content and some measure of your audience. Today that would be SMTP (email), RSS (podcasting), SMS, Usenet, Tor, Telegram... When we open source @tumblr it could be one of these.
People seem to be redefining Web 2.0 as Facebook, etc, that own data, but Web 2.0 at the time was platforms like WordPress, Odeo, Six Apart, Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us that had open data and interoperated. flickr.com/photos/ross/49…
I don't disagree with anything else in @brianarmstrong's thread, it's just a trend that retcons web2 to be regressive when the same goals (interoperability, openness, decentralization) were there. To be fair, Web2 probably did the same thing to Web1 in 2005.
Another throwback from 2005 by @pforret. JSON and BitTorrent!
I am very grateful that folks at Apple re-reviewed @WordPressiOS and have let us know we do not need to implement in-app purchases to be able to continue to update the app. Bad news travels faster than good, usually, so please consider sharing that they reversed course.
I did not expect the previous tweet to get attention outside the WP community. My understanding was the previous decision was final, and we had already made many of the arguments people suggested privately over the several weeks the app was locked.
We will continue to be responsive and do our best to be within both the spirit and letter of the app store rules, including closing any webview loopholes that pop up. This also made me appreciate the freedom of the open and independent web.
Heads up on why @WordPressiOS updates have been absent... we were locked by App Store. To be able to ship updates and bug fixes again we had to commit to support in-app purchases for .com plans. I know why this is problematic, open to suggestions. Allow others IAP? New name?
New name: The app has always done a ton of work to support WordPresses hosted anywhere, using the XML-RPC API included in core WP since WP 2.6 was released in 2008. That's why we called it "WordPress" and not "WordPress.com" or "Jetpack."
Allow others IAP: All of the code is open source, if other hosts or plugins wanted to support in-app purchases for their plans we could accept patches and have Automattic pass through the revenue. github.com/wordpress-mobi…