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Twitter Built a Messaging App But Never Released It (buzzfeed.com)

Twitter spent more than a year building a stand-alone instant messaging app that never ended up seeing the light of day. The product -- which provided a single interface for tweets and instant messages -- was built by Twitter's Indian engineering team at its office in Bengaluru, reports BuzzFeed News. The company shelved the app when it shut down its engineering center in the country in September, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to BuzzFeed News. The app was envisioned as a tool to ease new users on to Twitter's flagship platform. It did this by allowing users to subscribe to groups based around topics such as news, politics, and sports. The people within the groups could chat among themselves, and subscribe to additional accounts, pulling their tweets into the conversation. This kind of functionality is already available in Slack channels, and was tested in Facebook's now-defunct Rooms app (which itself may be making a comeback, if recent reports are to be believed).

5 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Written in India? by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Funny

    The probably couldn't make it work at all.

    Oh it worked...the problem was, no one could understand what was being said....

    ;)

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  2. Re:Written in India? by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's nothing quite like a good chat session.

    --
    "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
  3. Re:Written in India? by DrXym · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That would explain why they shut the group down. It'd be interesting to know the reasons why but my own experience of supervising a team in India is that culture, language and staff retention are serious problems. Whatever you think you're saving by paying less you could more than lose in terms of productivity and code quality.

  4. Re:Written in India? by cayenne8 · · Score: 2

    If you were making jokes about Muslims you'd face the full wrath of the social justice crowd.

    Ok...these two muslims walked into a bar, and ...............*BOOM*

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  5. Re:Written in India? by I4ko · · Score: 2

    Also "senior" in India does in no way relate to person's abilities, it just means they have been with the company for more than 1 year. They can continue to produce garbage as they did in their first year. Even "principal" is given based on years and not on actual abilities.