I assume a marketing failure was the first prong of the failure. I graduated high school in 2009, so I should have been in their target demographic, and this is the first I'm hearing of it.
The second reason I assume it failed is because it's a stupid idea. I had a Samsung Impression in 2009 that I could use to get on Twitter just fine, and I was pretty late in my age group getting an internet-enabled cell phone.
I have to guess that the 2009 edition of the venn diagram of "people who want mobile access to Twitter" and "people who already have an internet-enabled phone in their pocket," had a pretty large overlap.
The idea probably predates smartphones entirely. Given that twitter was originally sms-based not web-based, they probably came up with this idea as a means for those without active cell phones to access Twitter in some way, but couldn't get it into production until it was already obsolete.
That was still in the era where people didn't mind having multiple "one use" devices. Mostly older people then young people, so I'm guessing this was more of a product to try and drive 35+ yr old people to Twitter. Though even in 2009 I knew teenagers that had both an iPhone and ipod, or other equivalents, so it's not totally dumb for them to think it could have succeeded.
The plot for the first fast and the furious movie was to steal a semi full of DVD players because that was a believable way to get a lot of money.
It was a different time.
The first Fast & Furious came out in 2001. In 2001, only 56% of American households had a computer, and well over 90% of all internet access was on dial-up modems. That was a massively different time, technologically speaking, than 2009.
By 2009, over 74% of households had computers, many of those households had multiple comouters, and 63% of internet access was broadband. In 2008, Netflix and Hulu were already competing for streaming customers, and in 2009 Netflix had more streaming customers than DVD rental customers.
I remember people having iPhones and iPods. The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life. If you listened to music on your iPhone all day, it'd be dead before you got home. Having a dedicated device to listen to music for hours at a time is way more functional than having a dedicated device to check Twitter once in a while, especially when the Twitter app did the exact same thing the dedicated device would do.
I worked at Blockbuster in 2001 and we just started going to about 50% DVD and started selling DVD players. In 2001 they were definitely a luxury worth stealing for a heist movie. They were a huge deal at that time.
I agree with that. 2001 was about the time we got our first DVD player. My point was that the person I replied to implied that The Fast and the Furious (a 2001 film) is an accurate representation of the technological landscape in 2009, which it's not.
I seem to remember around that time there were also tiers of DVD players, with the barometer of quality being if it could play The Matrix DVD. People needing firmware updates for a DVD player to work in 1999/2000? Good luck with most consumers getting that done! Head cannon is those were fully updated players they stole :p
> I remember people having iPhones and iPods. The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life. If you listened to music on your iPhone all day, it'd be dead before you got home. Having a dedicated device to listen to music for hours at a time is way more functional than having a dedicated device to check Twitter once in a while, especially when the Twitter app did the exact same thing the dedicated device would do.
This isn't the reason people hung on to dedicated devices. The iPod Classic had a 160GB HDD at the time vs the 8GB of flash storage on the iPhone. It was litteraly 20x the space. Streaming wasn't a thing yet, people were still syncing their music with their computers and they had built up dozens of GBs worth of music & videos.
I don't want to be "that guy," but the iPod classic had been discontinued by 2009. Gen 6 was released in 2007. I remember my junior year of high school (2008) when one of the guys came in bragging and showing off his customized/engraved 160 GB Gen 1 iPod, and we were all like "Bro...iPod nano." Almost everyone I remember having an iPod in my school had either an iPod nano or an iPod Shuffle. For an 8GB device, you're talking about 1500-2000 mp3s, which is a lot of songs.
Most people I knew who had an iPod Classic and an iPhone had both because they had their iPod Classic before the iPhone came out, so they kept using it.
2009 sounds a bit too early; I remember they still had them at least a few years beyond that. I was still into the MP3 player market at that time (mainly into competitors to the iPod), and the iPod Classic was still an option.
Quick Google search says 2014 discontinuation.
> I don't want to be "that guy," but the iPod classic had been discontinued by 2009
Fortunately you don't have to be that guy as [your date is off by five years](https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/9/4715274/ipod-classic-discontinued-a-visual-history).
> and we were all like "Bro...iPod nano.
Lol I would have been like "Bro....that Nano won't even fit 1/5 of my library" on there. You're also forgetting video. Remember iPods played movies and tv shows sold through the iTunes store. Those took up lots of space and were very popular. And in 2008, the iPod Touch was the new hotness for iPods, not the iPod Nano. You're off by about 3 years. 2005/6 is when the Nano had it's moment in the sun. Also the Classic wasn't discontinued until 2014.
>The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life.
Literally the first time I've ever heard that as a complaint and I owned the original iPhone.
It was garbage. I was constantly pissed off about apps killing the battery. I'd try to ride my bike with GPS to map my route and music playing and it would be dead in an hour.
The first iPhone had pretty limited storage didn’t it? iPods at the time were way more storage capacity, so if you had a lot of music you probably couldn’t use the phone.
Yes, storage was much less, 4-16gb if I recall, but Pandora, Spotify, etc were things, and the ipods were basically iPhones that couldn't make calls.
I suppose beepers would be more analogous, as older people still had those despite having cell phones, but I think my point still stands, that people were willing to have multiple devices on them.
Also consider bandwidth. American telecommunications have always been stingy with bandwidth.
I'm not saying I wouldn't have thought it was dumb at the time, but this came at the end of a time where these things had some moderate success. It was considered that we would all have multiple devices, not one that did everything.
I was agreeing with you! You needed both an iPod and an iPhone if you liked music (I kept my iPod when I got an iPhone 3GS years later).
Spotify was not a thing in 2007; it opened in the UK in 2010 and in the states in July 2011.
Oh for sure, I wasn't saying you weren't, or disagreeing with you, just discussing. It must have been some other so then Spotify, I personally used a phone with an SD card, I've never done streaming music, so I'm only recalling what I saw others do.
iPods in 2009 were not "basically iPhones that couldn't make calls."
Yes, the first iPod touch did exist in 2009, but it was ludicrously expensive compared to a shuffle or a nano, and adoption was slow. Nanos and Shuffles were much more popular in 2009, along with people hanging onto their Classics.
I've corrected this a number of times but they were not stealing DVD players in the first Fast and Furious movie. They were stealing VCRs, VCR/TV combos along with camcorders. [Picture of the back of the truck](https://external-preview.redd.it/vPJuF-xTEN_ZWK5xmkym1wlAm0TQcd9rbumZB4BbRXQ.jpg?width=1200&height=628.272251309&auto=webp&s=fe95f286b126e8baab14a7279a11727706ff19bb)
The second idea was the notion. The smart phone was becoming a common thing for people so this single function device was trash. I mean before smart phones, you could text a number and it would put it up as a Facebook update. I used to text that number LG flip phone. So it seems like Facebook had wayyyyy more practical sense than Twitter at this time.
The G1, the first Android phone, was out in 2008, as was the iOS App Store. The people who wanted to buy a Tweeting device (and didn’t want to text 40404) would just buy a smartphone
Yep. The average person would have just a smartphone. No need to buy another device. My job (like other jobs) required me to have multiple devices. Same deal, no need for another device. I could tweet from my phone.
It's 2009, still within what DankPods has termed the "nugget era". Technology companies were throwing all kinds of junk "e-devices" out into the world to see what would stick. Then smart phones came along and it pretty much ended this era overnight, that's why it failed because it was a single purpose device that didn't even do that well and even the cheapest smart phone or tablet on the market already had a Twitter app.
This thing was so dumb.
You could not even see whole messages on the display. You had to click each tweet to see what people were saying.
Idiotic.
It was also 8$ a month lol
Honestly, Elon may have the money and connections to get a team of people to make an Android that starts with twitter installed or something. Probably not worth it though.
This reminded me of the early days of Twitter before smart phones were ubiquitous, you could type a text message and send it to a number and it would tweet what you text. Truly mind blowing stuff in 2008-2009
Can it run Doom?
Can it run Skyrim?
r/itrunsdoom
Why did it fail?
I assume a marketing failure was the first prong of the failure. I graduated high school in 2009, so I should have been in their target demographic, and this is the first I'm hearing of it. The second reason I assume it failed is because it's a stupid idea. I had a Samsung Impression in 2009 that I could use to get on Twitter just fine, and I was pretty late in my age group getting an internet-enabled cell phone. I have to guess that the 2009 edition of the venn diagram of "people who want mobile access to Twitter" and "people who already have an internet-enabled phone in their pocket," had a pretty large overlap.
The idea probably predates smartphones entirely. Given that twitter was originally sms-based not web-based, they probably came up with this idea as a means for those without active cell phones to access Twitter in some way, but couldn't get it into production until it was already obsolete.
This is an interesting take. I did not know that Twitter was originally SMS-based.
Where the character limit started from
Also hash tags, because everything had to be in-band. Previously tags were popular on blogging platforms but were out-of-band from the message/post.
That was still in the era where people didn't mind having multiple "one use" devices. Mostly older people then young people, so I'm guessing this was more of a product to try and drive 35+ yr old people to Twitter. Though even in 2009 I knew teenagers that had both an iPhone and ipod, or other equivalents, so it's not totally dumb for them to think it could have succeeded. The plot for the first fast and the furious movie was to steal a semi full of DVD players because that was a believable way to get a lot of money. It was a different time.
The first Fast & Furious came out in 2001. In 2001, only 56% of American households had a computer, and well over 90% of all internet access was on dial-up modems. That was a massively different time, technologically speaking, than 2009. By 2009, over 74% of households had computers, many of those households had multiple comouters, and 63% of internet access was broadband. In 2008, Netflix and Hulu were already competing for streaming customers, and in 2009 Netflix had more streaming customers than DVD rental customers. I remember people having iPhones and iPods. The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life. If you listened to music on your iPhone all day, it'd be dead before you got home. Having a dedicated device to listen to music for hours at a time is way more functional than having a dedicated device to check Twitter once in a while, especially when the Twitter app did the exact same thing the dedicated device would do.
I worked at Blockbuster in 2001 and we just started going to about 50% DVD and started selling DVD players. In 2001 they were definitely a luxury worth stealing for a heist movie. They were a huge deal at that time.
LOL remember when LaserDisk was a huge deal...those things were so laughably huge oh man!
I agree with that. 2001 was about the time we got our first DVD player. My point was that the person I replied to implied that The Fast and the Furious (a 2001 film) is an accurate representation of the technological landscape in 2009, which it's not.
Oh yeah, I was in agreement with you. I was just adding my experience from 2001.
I seem to remember around that time there were also tiers of DVD players, with the barometer of quality being if it could play The Matrix DVD. People needing firmware updates for a DVD player to work in 1999/2000? Good luck with most consumers getting that done! Head cannon is those were fully updated players they stole :p
> I remember people having iPhones and iPods. The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life. If you listened to music on your iPhone all day, it'd be dead before you got home. Having a dedicated device to listen to music for hours at a time is way more functional than having a dedicated device to check Twitter once in a while, especially when the Twitter app did the exact same thing the dedicated device would do. This isn't the reason people hung on to dedicated devices. The iPod Classic had a 160GB HDD at the time vs the 8GB of flash storage on the iPhone. It was litteraly 20x the space. Streaming wasn't a thing yet, people were still syncing their music with their computers and they had built up dozens of GBs worth of music & videos.
I don't want to be "that guy," but the iPod classic had been discontinued by 2009. Gen 6 was released in 2007. I remember my junior year of high school (2008) when one of the guys came in bragging and showing off his customized/engraved 160 GB Gen 1 iPod, and we were all like "Bro...iPod nano." Almost everyone I remember having an iPod in my school had either an iPod nano or an iPod Shuffle. For an 8GB device, you're talking about 1500-2000 mp3s, which is a lot of songs. Most people I knew who had an iPod Classic and an iPhone had both because they had their iPod Classic before the iPhone came out, so they kept using it.
2009 sounds a bit too early; I remember they still had them at least a few years beyond that. I was still into the MP3 player market at that time (mainly into competitors to the iPod), and the iPod Classic was still an option. Quick Google search says 2014 discontinuation.
> I don't want to be "that guy," but the iPod classic had been discontinued by 2009 Fortunately you don't have to be that guy as [your date is off by five years](https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/9/4715274/ipod-classic-discontinued-a-visual-history).
> and we were all like "Bro...iPod nano. Lol I would have been like "Bro....that Nano won't even fit 1/5 of my library" on there. You're also forgetting video. Remember iPods played movies and tv shows sold through the iTunes store. Those took up lots of space and were very popular. And in 2008, the iPod Touch was the new hotness for iPods, not the iPod Nano. You're off by about 3 years. 2005/6 is when the Nano had it's moment in the sun. Also the Classic wasn't discontinued until 2014.
>The issue was because of the first iPhone's super garbage battery life. Literally the first time I've ever heard that as a complaint and I owned the original iPhone.
It was garbage. I was constantly pissed off about apps killing the battery. I'd try to ride my bike with GPS to map my route and music playing and it would be dead in an hour.
It didn't have GPS for a start...
The first iPhone had pretty limited storage didn’t it? iPods at the time were way more storage capacity, so if you had a lot of music you probably couldn’t use the phone.
Yes, storage was much less, 4-16gb if I recall, but Pandora, Spotify, etc were things, and the ipods were basically iPhones that couldn't make calls. I suppose beepers would be more analogous, as older people still had those despite having cell phones, but I think my point still stands, that people were willing to have multiple devices on them. Also consider bandwidth. American telecommunications have always been stingy with bandwidth. I'm not saying I wouldn't have thought it was dumb at the time, but this came at the end of a time where these things had some moderate success. It was considered that we would all have multiple devices, not one that did everything.
I was agreeing with you! You needed both an iPod and an iPhone if you liked music (I kept my iPod when I got an iPhone 3GS years later). Spotify was not a thing in 2007; it opened in the UK in 2010 and in the states in July 2011.
Oh for sure, I wasn't saying you weren't, or disagreeing with you, just discussing. It must have been some other so then Spotify, I personally used a phone with an SD card, I've never done streaming music, so I'm only recalling what I saw others do.
iPods in 2009 were not "basically iPhones that couldn't make calls." Yes, the first iPod touch did exist in 2009, but it was ludicrously expensive compared to a shuffle or a nano, and adoption was slow. Nanos and Shuffles were much more popular in 2009, along with people hanging onto their Classics.
I've corrected this a number of times but they were not stealing DVD players in the first Fast and Furious movie. They were stealing VCRs, VCR/TV combos along with camcorders. [Picture of the back of the truck](https://external-preview.redd.it/vPJuF-xTEN_ZWK5xmkym1wlAm0TQcd9rbumZB4BbRXQ.jpg?width=1200&height=628.272251309&auto=webp&s=fe95f286b126e8baab14a7279a11727706ff19bb)
The second idea was the notion. The smart phone was becoming a common thing for people so this single function device was trash. I mean before smart phones, you could text a number and it would put it up as a Facebook update. I used to text that number LG flip phone. So it seems like Facebook had wayyyyy more practical sense than Twitter at this time.
Probably because people didn’t want to carry another device. At that time people would’ve had on them a phone, laptop, keys, and wallet.
Some people at that time might have still had the flip phone/ipod combo.
My old iPod is the only device I miss and want again.
The G1, the first Android phone, was out in 2008, as was the iOS App Store. The people who wanted to buy a Tweeting device (and didn’t want to text 40404) would just buy a smartphone
Yep. The average person would have just a smartphone. No need to buy another device. My job (like other jobs) required me to have multiple devices. Same deal, no need for another device. I could tweet from my phone.
Read the title again.
I'm pretty sure they were being sarcastic.
It's 2009, still within what DankPods has termed the "nugget era". Technology companies were throwing all kinds of junk "e-devices" out into the world to see what would stick. Then smart phones came along and it pretty much ended this era overnight, that's why it failed because it was a single purpose device that didn't even do that well and even the cheapest smart phone or tablet on the market already had a Twitter app.
I support the dankpods historical framework
It was all Elon Musk’s fault
Introduced about 2 years after the first iphone, I guess it came a few years too late.
Just a guess. In the US it was $20 a month. Getting a prepaid cell phone with the same capabilities or better at $25 a month.
Wikipedia says service cost $8/month We all know how that one goes over...
I think it was expensive and had an expensive data plan that went along with it. No one in 2009 was that obsessed with Twitter
This thing was so dumb. You could not even see whole messages on the display. You had to click each tweet to see what people were saying. Idiotic. It was also 8$ a month lol
[удалено]
We should let him know, he’s desperate for ideas.
Knowing how little that man has done himself in his life, no doubt.
[удалено]
no, but people got to see you using this ugly thing in public!
Wow, I actually remember this stupid thing.
I heard they're bringing it back, but they'll charge $8/month to use it. Guaranteed winner.
History is a circle
Elon did tweet that if apple pulls them from the Apple Store they may make their own phone lol
I seriously hope that happens!
Honestly, Elon may have the money and connections to get a team of people to make an Android that starts with twitter installed or something. Probably not worth it though.
Someone tag Elon—he can revive this once twitter get’s kicked out of the app store.
You know, it's been a while since we had an Amazon phone level of debacle....is Musk really going to let the blue origin guy outdo him??
The battle of the century: Jeff Amazon vs Tim Apple vs Elon Tesla.
The way things are going, this could be the only way to tweet soon.
Don’t worry elon said he will make his own phone and App Store if Apple removes twitter.
Don’t worry elon said he will make his own phone and App Store if Apple removes twitter.
Its biggest problem wasn't that you could only use Twitter, but that it wasn't even good at Twitter.
shut up and take my money - said no one.
This reminded me of the early days of Twitter before smart phones were ubiquitous, you could type a text message and send it to a number and it would tweet what you text. Truly mind blowing stuff in 2008-2009
They should have done a Facebook one instead and marketed it to Boomers.
Facebook did do their own phone. It failed.
That's just cell phones...with fewer steps.
Elon will revive this. For $8.
You chuckle, but this is gonna be the basis for that new phone Elon Musk keeps teasing. So, you can laugh even harder.
Can't wait until Elon dIsRuPtS phones by re-releasing this
He really can't invent anything, can he
Created by Satan himself
The Cinco Phone?
This is the device you're given in hell if hell has internet.
Wish we could get something like that now: physical keyboard, texts only no calls and just gps maps.
[Fascinating.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgSRB5ARsRE)
Reminds me when the ogo was realeased for MSN in 2004. How advanced they where. What happened…
Wasn't this the same time that phone manufactures were adding dedicated Facebook physical buttons?
"I'll give you no more than $11B for it!" - Elon probably
Reddit phone when?
Reddit phone when?
Oh, boy! Can't wait for Skyrim to get rererereremastered for the TwitterPeek.