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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

The copy highlights something that I don't understand about Twitter. It reads:

Maybe you want to get a tweet when your laundry's done [...]

Who would actually do this? Why would I use Twitter to send a private notification like that? It's pretty much the worst system imaginable. Twitter works great for broadcasting to people, but it's nonsense for one-to-one messages.

Is this really how I want to set up my washing machine:

1) Create a Twitter account for the machine. Let's call it @pavlovs_2011_electrolux.

2) Subscribe my public Twitter account to @pavlovs_2011_electrolux. (Alternatively, maybe the washing machine can be configured with my public Twitter account so it can send messages to me.)

3) Keep an eye for my washing machine's notifications amongst a sea of disorganized tweets about public topics.

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Lots of good points for and against the twitter integration. There are ways of setting up Twitter such that you'd have your privacy alright, wich I'm sure many people would still not care about—after all, what could possibly go wrong? [1]

So yes, it lets people shoot themselves in the foot; yes, people will most likely shoot themselves in the foot; but no, that's not the main problem and in fact you can hypothetically use twine + twitter in a more or less private manner.

The problem is that broadcasting through Twitter makes you depend on a service by a company, where you could just as easily have come up with a solution that works with a publicly-known protocol which can be deployed by many parties (the closest match here would be status.net).

Then again, their point is precisely to make using the bloody thing easy. It's increadible how the easy way to make things usable always implies lots of trade-offs in security, privacy, openness and whatnot... No wonder people who solve usability problems the right way are so valuable.

[1] DEFCON 18, "Web services we just don't need": http://youtu.be/mbZccSwgbIU (it runs almost 1h, and is equal parts hilarious and pointless).

the point isn't to get a tweet, it's that twitter is a great free IP-to-sms bridge. back in the day, in the small window of time when twitter was popular but not everybody had smartphones with push email, the twitter api was by far the easiest way to get push notifications. and now it's just cool.

Sure, good rant, but what are the alternatives for real-time notifications that do not require a "nerd degree" to configure? There are one.

Also, practically speaking - filtering out specific tweets and alerting on them is an issue with a Twitter client, and not the Twitter platform. Similarly, the privacy setup can be readily handled either via direct messages or by protecting tweets. In other words, Twitter is really not a bad choice for their purpose. Not ideal, but still a good functional fit.

whoever invented water, it wasn't fish. (source: not me)

People will obtain value from these devices if it meets their needs and exercises their imagination.

Twitter is just a medium. Fine, don't use Twitter. Use SNMP or Finger or Email or a broadcast over the subnet; it doesn't matter.

Twitter is the new hotness, its buzzword tech that will move more units than a device that does something more practical.

Using Twitter shows off that you have Twine - this is good for Twine and may be good for your status/nerd cred.

Do you really need a reminder for when your washing machine is done? Is this a problem that society really needs to solve? My washing machine has this sweet feature called a buzzer. And that feature can be turned off in favor of wait an hour and go downstairs.

twitter has private messages and comes with an ecosystem of apps with notification systems for pretty much all mobile devices.

So does email. Email will be around in 5-10 years and is not tied to a company. Who knows what will happen to Twitter.

If my washing machine emailed me that would likely get lost in the noise. A Twitter DM is, relatively speaking, more noticeable.

(Although; an actual direct notification service would be even better)

Wait, really? You must use email and twitter in strange ways. I would also suggest setting up a "priority" email path for certain cases, like this.

On my phone there is no simple way to prioritise it; that happens when I sit in front of the computer and cut through my pile of email :)

So for something that I consistently need to notice at the time it arrives, things like SMS, Twitter DM or other low-traffic notifications are better.

What's wrong with SMS?

It can cost extra money in many places? Also, hooking it up to the mobile phone network requires more hardware or reliance on a SMS gateway.

Many providers provide email addresses for each number that causes an SMS message to be sent.

Some providers, I think you mean.

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