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Could recent Twitter refugees just cook up a new Twitter?

7 points by jancsika ↗ HN
Most of you got a severance package, no? And AFAICT non-competes aren't legal in California.

So how about a server in Go, maybe starting with the old school character limit and no fancy stuff like video or images?

Throw it up on Github and see where you get in two weeks. If it looks decent enough then try running a Wikipedia-style donation run. Or make a funky new developer coop business. Or simply a regular business and battle it out publicly with your former boss!

Hell, you could start by limiting access only to the thousands of you who just got fired. People would probably pay just to get read access to watch you communicate over the service as you build it.

As a bonus, I'd be happy to test the Iphone app. (Thursday afternoons after 11 a.m. Eastern work well for me.)

5 comments

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warning26
Sure, but so could anyone; there are plenty of open source Twitter clones you can easily deploy to your own server.

Twitter is primarily valued for its user base, not for its technology.

kweingar
The tech has to be solid to serve timelines, video, etc. to half a billion people
ActorNightly
You are assuming there is technical competency there to actually make something even remotely functional. Most employees in big tech companies get brought on to essentially do some code modification to existing codebases, which is a task that is much, much simpler than building out service code and infrastructure from the get go.
beardyw
An interesting question. I think the problem would be that the existing structure, senior vs junior, could not easily be recreated. Everyone sitting at home would want equal treatment and nothing would get decided.
tomcam
Do you think the real hurdle to mass adoption is technology?