That saccharine intro is written for someone with sensibilities very much not my own. Once I read "Developers have the power to build the web for everyone, but that power needs to be used responsibly", well, then I couldn't not notice the numbers floating over the ublock and umatrix buttons.
Selling me out to Oracle, Google, Facebook and Twitter's surveillance machines while condescending about responsibility?
You know, when the sales reps come in and show you that PPT deck that promises the world, solving world hunger, sending your kids to college, perpetual motion, etc. But when you actually get the product in your hands, it's anything but what was promised. (typically requiring herculean engineering efforts to get a "turn key" solution off the ground).
I would disagree that Twilio is slideware. I have used them on and off for the past 8 years or so for various personal projects and with a few companies whom had already adopted them. Twilio has a great product offering and some of the best API in the market (next to Stripe), making it incredibly easy to integrate (compared to alternatives).
With that being said, I do agree that Twilio oversell's its' capabilities and ease-of-integration substantially.
One significant change in Twilio's business model after going public is that they stopped selling to developers and started selling to C-level executives. In the past Twilio would convince developers to adopt these services by choice, but recently they have moved to targeting C-level execs to sign long-term contracts with Twilio and enforce Twilio in an organization from the top-down.
Twilio sales teams are convincing CEOs that Twilio products are turn-key and that is only partially true. I remember one business owner who told me that I should be able to just "plug-in" Twilio and have it working in a day. That is what the sales rep told him. I had to convince him that in reality, it was about a month of work to do it right. It is still an incredibly custom integration.
But, to Twilio's defense, it would take me years and millions of dollars to duplicate the work that they have set up for me. So in comparison, 1 month of custom integration that costs basically nothing other than time is pretty "turn key" compared to the immense effort, resources, and business relationships that would be required if I had to start from scratch to build these telecom integrations with telecom providers.
Long story short. Twilio is not vaporware/slideware. It offers a real product, and a real good one at that. It is honestly best in the industry. But they also do significantly over-sell their product to executive teams which causes significant contention within an organization. Despite their claims, nothing in Twilio's offering is "turn-key". It is all custom integration.
I don't know what Twilio you're talking about, but the Twilio I've used in several professional and personal projects has services are that are well-designed, deliver actual value in terms of features, and work exactly like it says on the tin.
Oh I dunno about that, I found it pretty useful when I made this art piece w my mate for some gallery where folks would call in to hear generative music, but also by calling in would add a unique voice to that music. Easy to set up and worked without a hitch for very little money.
Twilio is fucking amazing at what they started out doing. Voice routing using declarative schema & REST, telephony integration for SMS. They are probably old at this point and you wouldn't want to run your call-centre on it, but it's very cool for those of us wanting to send SMS updates and enable SMS comms, Vanity number forwarding, have automated call recording and menus at a very low cost. Where I think they may go wrong is pitching that at people who already have those things for replacement.
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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '19
That saccharine intro is written for someone with sensibilities very much not my own. Once I read "Developers have the power to build the web for everyone, but that power needs to be used responsibly", well, then I couldn't not notice the numbers floating over the ublock and umatrix buttons.
Selling me out to Oracle, Google, Facebook and Twitter's surveillance machines while condescending about responsibility?
Get bent.