Does anyone else wonder whether or not the explosion of solar panel telemarketing calls are a consequence of how easy Twilio makes it to set up call center operations and change in and out of numbers?
Twilio requires that you call from either a number you have in their system, or a number you've verified ownership of. That's a higher bar than a lot of voip providers -- i've gotten many calls from numbers that don't even fit in the dialing plan.
From what I remember, you can change in and out of phone numbers like with Google voice - and there are a ton of them. I don't know if that matters for spammy calls - I don't know anything about that domain.
Twilio allows you to automate calls programmatically, and what a lot of the callers do is wait for you to say hello - they're robo dialers. I wonder how much Twilio has influenced that (unknowingly or deliberately)
This is very easy and cheap to implement with Asterisk and a no-name VoIP provider. I've done some messing around with phones in the past and I would expect that Twilio has little/no effect on this space -- the barriers to being spammy with Twilio are higher than with Asterisk and another VoIP provider.
Not at all. There's dedicated dialer programs, and they use much, much, cheaper providers than Twilio. Dialer wholesale companies make around 10% if they're doing well. It's a very high volume business, and they are constantly on their feet since other providers will cut them off if their call acceptance and durations aren't high enough.
Telecom makes most "web scale" stuff look very small. Even a one-man operation might be doing 4000 calls a sec, each requiring about 20 packets, plus routing and billing lookups and records.
There are a lot of providers that do not check what the outbound caller-id is set as. The provider verifies that the server is allowed to send the traffic, that is all.
Regarding the amount he makes from the terminals and service, I don't doubt that's the major haul of any given year, year after year.
Not coincidentally, that's why I take his pontificating about finance and economics with a grain of salt - he was a tech savvy info delivery man who lucked into trapping people into a dog-shit ugly, expensive, and industry ubiquitous device.
It's along the lines of "I'll view Google as more than just an extremely successful ad agency when they make money on their other projects" which might not seem fair, but cuts through a lot of the enigma-like perspectives regarding tech firms.
In that case, you'd really enjoy Charlie Munger's parable about the Shoebutton Prince.
The story goes that one of Charlie's distant relatives had cornered some part of the 1920's shoebutton market. Back then, shoebuttons were smallish ornaments you put on your shoes.
The success entitled the prince to pontificate on any and all things in unlimited fashion--especially those outside the realm of shoebuttons.
I do believe I would enjoy that parable because I think it happens a lot in the US culture. You know like listening to, ahem, certain anti-vaccine people simply because they were in a nudie magazine and on the TV for a while.
I don't agree with a lot of his political views but I'll trust him on the finance and economics front over a majority of politicians given that he worked for Salomon Brothers and arguably was an extremely well-accomplished mayor. Bloomberg is arguably a technology company delivering a product for the finance sector but he absolutely had the prerequisite domain knowledge to launch the company and propel it into what it is today.
Oh I agree regarding the business savvy and intelligence to put out a successful product and maintain a market share. The guy did an absolutely fabulous job of it, and I'm not sure it could be replicated.
Although, having worked in municipal finance on the Street for a couple years (somewhat back office, somewhat deal support) I can honestly say that a lot of the systems and information in certain sectors is pretty dated. As in, not very good by modern standards. The MSRB is trying with EMMA - but because there's no fiscal / competitive reward like in Bloomberg's info providing case, rather it's for regulatory and market stability - but a lot of stuff was still pretty old school.
I've designed an "Information as a Service" program targeting some of the most lucrative sectors in public finance (construction, transportation, education, etc) but still haven't mastered the design / handshakes with needed sources (ex. Thompson Reuters) to really call it ready to debut. Another issue is finding the right price point - Bloomberg's got a racket going, I'd just want to hit a good spot where most businesses could afford access, or put it at a value premium where having the information before others (arranged/conditioned by the system) would be worth larger expense. Eh, good times!
So, you mean like the concept of a "loss leader" like when Best Buy sells new release under cost (ex. $9.99) then wants to sell the same customer a brand new $3,000 4K HDTV?
What you pay for is not a mere data aggregater, it's practically everything you'll ever need in a single system. It wouldn't cost that much if it was just 'S,' it's something much more valuable.
I always suspected the cost was a function of the profits of the firms using them.
I think it is a smart move to force bundle the hardware and form the users' keystroke habits over a career. I imagine the switching costs are extreme.
I'm not a trader. I'm actually a programmer and just curious about a lot of things. One day, I contacted Thomson Reuters and asked to try their competing system, I think it was Elektron. It is a pure software system that I got bored with after a few days of exploring.
Probably Eikon? Elektron is Reuters' real-time data play, Eikon has much more of the news/data/analysis functionality of BB. It's terrible marketing, even from their pages it's pretty hard to differentiate [1] [2]
Any insider information which came with a Bloomberg terminal would be practically worthless. Every trader would have it.
You're probably confusing the sharing of insider information via the IM feature, which definitely does happen. But blaming Bloomberg for that makes about as much sense as blaming Apple for terrorists using iPhones.
The accusation is that Bloomberg uses data from the people using the terminals to inform their own trades. It popped up a little while back but I can't find the original articles.
> The Guardian also understands that JP Morgan also has concerns about how Bloomberg used information from its terminals while pursuing stories about Bruno Iksil, the trader known as the London Whale, who was blamed for massive losses at the bank last year. Bloomberg said it had blocked journalists' access to client data within 24 hours of receiving a complaint from Goldman.
Everyone is misunderstanding you. You're accusing Bloomberg of using data mined from the usage of the Bloomberg keyboard in order to make more informed trades.
I think the debate about Colleges vs. Bootcamps is an apples to oranges comparison
Algorithms are commoditized into libraries. Web design has been commoditized with templates.
Open-ended programming is still more complicated, but putting apps on the web today is easier than static HTML just 5 years ago. Parts of programming will continue being commoditized.
So if it's easy to create something and put it out there, the great and all-important challenge that faces developers today is making it matter.
From what I can recall or determine, I don't think Google's ever really given a product or service less than a year from release to shutdown. But a lot of them get killed between the one and two year marks.
Copying and pasting from SO is perfectly acceptable as long as you know what the code is doing.
When I paste code, I include a comment with the link back to SO. I see it as the standard way of declaring a precedent in programming, where upvotes signal strength.
