<story><title>Why Twitter is a Big Deal (2009)</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/twitter.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>r00k</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Because they haven&apos;t tried to control it too much, Twitter feels to everyone like previous protocols. One forgets it&apos;s owned by a private company.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Makers of Twitter clients were eventually reminded of this fact in a rather painful way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Twitter is a Big Deal (2009)</title><url>http://paulgraham.com/twitter.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>malay</author><text>I was almost positive I had read the idea of Twitter as a protocol before (or something very similar), even though on Twitter[1] pg notes he never published this specific piece despite having written it in 2009. I really appreciated the simplicity of thinking of Twitter that way, and the definition has stuck with me.&lt;p&gt;In case anyone else wanted to know where they read it, it&apos;s under Request for Startups, #3[2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/paulg/status/338702876744482816&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/paulg/status/338702876744482816&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>