SESNETEC Systems Engineering: Simple (Not Easy) To Extremely Complicated

This is the start of a functional representation of Twitter. Each major user visible result (feature) is represented as a separate element. In addition, "obvious" major Twitter functions are represented in the same fashion. Each represents an opportunity to provide value to the users or to disappoint them. The core functionality that drives the twitter community is the consolidation of tweets. This is the 'rare jewel' that only Twitter owns at this point. There has been discussion that this is the one part of the Twitter machine that is unique and cannot be distributed or easily duplicated. Once the tweets have been time-stamped and stored, there are various ways to release the tweets back to the community. But let's get to the diagram. Note: The "Collect" functions are equivalent to the TIPs that Dave Winer referred to here.

In fact, some of the tweets might want to be immediately passed along before they are stored and there are many ways to store them. Similarly there are a number (>1) of mechanisms for preparing the tweets for return to the community via the web, SMS or XMPP.

More details as I have time. Feel free to add your own as child pages or links to your own pages.