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TwitterDrive - Tweets are the next evolution in message protocols

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Today we announced TwitterDrive, a free, open source application that will revolutionize cloud storage and cloud applications as we know it.  Here is an interview with the TweetDrive creator, Brian Peek with the full details.

What is it?  
TweetDrive is a .NET application that enables you to use Twitter as a cloud storage backend to share files, musics, photos, anything

How does it work?
TweetDrive serializes your file into BASE64, splits the file 140 characters at a time and uploads each file chunk to Twitter.

Does it really work?
Yes! Here's an example Tweet from my TweetDrive account, DanielfeDrive

v6Ld6nEc7w/kXepotrAlOWo984Ob3M6+tJNaNpzpZtQ5Rp5zV99RsnL7NroXvLeNKbdQVWIdizYpqPdJqJR9JFBeIVoO5rwoNITw2J/oKW/FlWjf0aaDJLENCGgYNW5Tpvfu

about 18 hours ago from web

Why use TwitterDrive?

  • Infinite Storage - There are no limits to how many Tweets you can have on Twitter
  • Leverages Network Effect - Before TwitterDrive, sending files across the network was just from user A to user B. Now communication is open and linked in a social graph. Social file sharing is the future
  • Open Protocols - Since Twitter has an open API, all data is accessible via XML which means developers will be able to build applications on top of this communication stack.

Evolution of networking
I think what you'll see is that Twitter is the next evolution of message protocols. Traditional communication protocols are point-to-point (TCP/IP request between you and a Web site) and totally closed (the exchange is designed to be private between users, outside of packet sniffers).

It's not just TCP/IP that is closed, other communication protocols or applications like email, FTP, HTTP, file streaming are closed systems. Twitter is the future of a communication protocol, it's not only completely open, it's a protocol that is social by design.

I suspect that academics will be re-writing networking books to include Twitter as the fifth and perhaps final layer on top of the TCP/IP protocol.

 

The Future
This is absolutely just the beginning. Imagine how many applications can be built on top of a totally free, distributed, and social computing cloud. It won't be long before we see the next BitTorrent client or a full blown Web site running using Twitter Cloud Storage. I won't be surprised if the next cloud operating system is distributed and run directly from Twitter.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2009
    Once we get the kinks out of TwitterDrive , maybe we should add an RDP player on top of it so you can

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2009
    If you fiddle the user-agent then you could add metadata. Noice. Coming soon - FTP by SMS, a way to use all the phone credit when you run out of bandwidth.

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2009
    This is so cool. Will the API let me set QoS priority for voice and video?

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 16, 2009
    still not understanding the difference between twitter and tweet and how they would be outsourced differently than a gloabal list of email addresses..

  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2009
    im kinda having some problems with the twitter drive application it seems like it will not work on my computer that has widows vista