In this hypothetical minimalist Twitter clone in the 2009 spirit, images are elsewhere. We have a widely used hypertext protocol that lets you reference media objects from anywhere, so let’s use that. Client apps can individually solve the image upload usability question in ways that fit their user base.
Yes, there will be broken links. But IMO that’s better than having all your data in one centralized location where it can eventually be taken over by private equity looking to make a buck, or a billionaire who wants to be a media mogul.
Edit: Looking back at historical Twitter news, it’s clear that in 2010 their vision was still to have images embedded from other sites. Here’s a relevant TechCrunch article:
Note how they added display support for embedded Flickr photo set links. Your pictures could be on the dedicated photo service and you’d still get the nice set browsing UI inside Twitter. They should have stuck with this and built a protocol that lets sites interoperate on things like “here’s a set of photos to be embedded” (so you could use something else than Flickr). But instead they wanted to chase the wannabe-Facebook dream of sucking everything into their servers and using a closed client to sell inline ads.
Yes, there will be broken links. But IMO that’s better than having all your data in one centralized location where it can eventually be taken over by private equity looking to make a buck, or a billionaire who wants to be a media mogul.
Edit: Looking back at historical Twitter news, it’s clear that in 2010 their vision was still to have images embedded from other sites. Here’s a relevant TechCrunch article:
https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/new-twitter-tips/
Note how they added display support for embedded Flickr photo set links. Your pictures could be on the dedicated photo service and you’d still get the nice set browsing UI inside Twitter. They should have stuck with this and built a protocol that lets sites interoperate on things like “here’s a set of photos to be embedded” (so you could use something else than Flickr). But instead they wanted to chase the wannabe-Facebook dream of sucking everything into their servers and using a closed client to sell inline ads.