Y-Combinator’s Request For Startups: Things Built On Twitter.
gbattle sez:
I have a lot of issues with people playing loose and fast with the the term protocol when what they really mean is API. Twitter is not a protocol, it is an API. Protocols have rule sets around generic communication, are decentralized and open in terms of control, and most important, are not concerned with implementation details. Hence, though the RFC 5321 for the SMTP protocol is out there to define the rules around email communication, there is no central control over implementation, no specific core language API to code on top of or permute into other languages. Innovation around open protocol implementation is rampant and has led to the successful companies in the above quote. No single company owns the protocol. I submit that the challengers to Twitter and Facebook’s respective microblogging and identity dominance isn’t some upstart’s new and improved API, but open protocols that cement the byte-level interoperability and externalize the innovation.
