Create a Twitter-like service in 45 minutes

Twitter, the micro blogging service used by more than 500.000 people (not official, but this should be a realistic number according to many trusted sources), has become more and more popular even thanks to its simplicity as well as the wide availability of third party applications that make it even easier.

Many have often stated that, at the end of the day, from the technical standpoint Twitter is nothing really special. On the other hand, a widely used service doesn’t necessarily need to be driven by a sort of patented unique technology or special algorithms and so on. Users rule.

That said, how long does it take for a potential competitor to setup a Twitter-like service from scratch?

I often referred to Guy Kawasaki’s service Truemors as an interesting example. Thanks to Open Source, he realized a pretty unique website (even if, according to TechCrunch, the ugliest one in the Universe..) with just roughly $12.000. Most of that sum is made of legal fees and logo design, but from the technical standpoint you really need much less.  

Here is how anyone can create a Twitter-like service in less than 45 minutes. I did this experiment during my spare time while I was in Palo Alto a few weeks ago, so anyone can do the same pretty easily.

1) Choose a name and register a domain: I chose www.techtwits.com, thinking of a twitter-like service for posting breaking news on technology. It takes $9.99 / year and 5 minutes to do that.

2) Subscribe for a dedicated server somewhere. There are many options (Yahoo, Dreamhost, etc.) to do that and the associated cost is around $30 to $60 / month. I shared the same servers I use for this blog, but it’s not really the best option since I don’t have a dedicated server. You need a dedicated server in order to avoid problems of scalability and, if your service is successful, keep an eye to it. How long? Let’s say 15 minutes.

3) Install WordPress 2.5. Dreamhost and many others offer a “one-click install” option, so it usually shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes and you don’t need to be a PHP expert to do that. After the install is completed, make sure to go to Settings->General->Membership and enable the “Anyone can register” option. Set the “New User Default Role” as “Subscriber”.

4) Install the “Prologue” theme. This theme has been developed from the Automattic team for internal usage, but it’s really well done and ready to be used in services like this. It should take 5 minutes.

5) Make sure to add the “Meta” widget to the sidebar to let users sign up to your service from the home page. In addition, if users want to have an avatar associated to their account, make sure they sign up for a Gravatar account, using the same email they used to subscribe to your service. Let’s dedicate 10 minutes more to this activity.

Here is the result: http://www.techtwits.com.

If you did everything described above, you will have your ready to use twitter-like service up and running in about 45 minutes. Now you can work on customizations, graphic improvements and so on, but most part of the job is done. In addition to this, you can give your users the ability to post from third party applications, from mobile phones or even by sending an email to a specific address, thank to the huge number of wordpress blog posting tools available.

In conclusion, this want be just an example to demonstrate how good times are these if you want to become an entrepreneur. Focus on your idea, focus on how you want to differentiate your service from the competition in terms of contents and functionalities, keeping in mind that Open Source and a programmer could be all you need to solve all your technical issues and launch your new service.

Tagged as: luca filigheddu, microblogging, opensource, techtwits, Twitter