Hey guys - by no means does this post profess to be comprehensive, so I'm hoping to stimulate a larger discussion around this issue. Anybody who works in software should be able to relate on some level...
Nice, simple idea - solid MVP. Good use case for text processing too because the domain of candidate phrases, patterns you are looking for is relatively small :)
Here are UX some suggestions:
-It will require some effort, but you should try to surface companies as tags if you can. Will be a popular feature...We did this at my last startup Tracked.com and it was a really popular. You can start by getting a list of companies via Crunchbase API and then use that set to do the entity extraction.
-Same as above, but for programming language keywords
-Show timestamps of Tweets (you've heard this a lot)
Ha! That blog is an awesome idea. So may ideas left to die (or...live on?) - I can completely relate...believe me. If you ever wanted guest contributors to THAT, I think there are probably a few others who can relate who read HN.
Really like the insight you made about conversation starting. The problem is that most people won't believe they can actually attract the audience needed to create a fertile conversation on their blog.
Glad you like it. Feel free to pimp it/use it whenever you want :)
Anyway - if we can find the time, we may release new features in the near-term that will make it even more interesting! Or we might just procrastinate and not do anything...
Regarding, TwitLonger and Google+ - yes, the distinction is not strong. We've built a POC but want to add features that make each post more "special." Because we're divorcing posts from blogs, each post can look different :)
I hear you on the antidote, but I'm not sure it will work for most people. In fact, many people don't have an "expertise" to share and are looking to post thoughts about non-work-related material.
One of the things I found most interesting was that out of the 140 friends on Facebook that on average people have, only 7 of those friends are communicated with via wall posts and messages. There is irony in the fact that although online networks reduce friction in communication, the communication is very infrequent.
Tv usage is up more than ever and continues to grow every year. I don't think TV has lost at all yet. And I don't agree that networks are grudgingly putting content online. Hulu is an object of much affection in the video viewing world, so much so that it warranted Super Bowl ad space.