Wednesday, December 22
My post Why Choose Tropo over Twilio caused quite a stir on Hacker News last week. The resulting comment storm still hasn’t quieted completely. The debate continued on to the VOIP Users Conference Podcast, where I was a guest along with Twilio CTO Evan Cooke in a podcast called When Clouds Collide.
Personally, I was inspired by the discussion, and put together this short animation to help explain some of the finer points:
Before everyone goes crazy:
Here’s the article where Dave McClure was quoted as saying “Open is for losers“. And here’s where he was quoted saying “Fuck that noise” in response to Twilio criticism (or if that link goes away…here’s a nice Fuck That Noise screencap)
If you have trouble viewing the YouTube version, you can always go to the source: Tropo vs. Twilio
22, December20:06
kinda funny… not a bad attempt at humor, if perhaps a bit unoriginal.
that said: i may not know much about telephony, but Twilio does… and startups are welcome to throw up in my hat anyday, assuming they’re using Twilio.
have fun chasing us our tail johnny
- dave “ultimate frisbee playing, swearing, open-hating, uselessly ignorant of telephony, super angel… who is still kicking your ass down the street 10 ways from sunday” mcclure
23, December3:36
Good one Dave… you even humorously highlighted how much you don’t know… Voxeo started 10 years earlier, has 10x the number of developers, and at least 30x the revenue of Twilio. From Twilio’s “published” counts it appears Tropo and Twilio are bringing in new developers at about the same rate. Twilio always has been chasing Voxeo’s tail …and will be for a very, very long time.
Chase this noise, biatch!
And…Merry Christmas!
23, December11:31
I was promised cursing. He didn’t even curse once in that response.
I feel cheated.
Ass doesn’t count.
20, February14:44
I’m trying to setup an app using Twilio. About half the phone numbers they supplied me with for tracking don’t work. It’s a huge hassle to change the Twilio number to a new number to pair with a phone number. Twilio refuses to provide support by phone, and their email support is horrible. I would stay far away from Twilio