Twitter Decides To Kill Its Ecosystem: How Not To Run A Modern Company
from the big-mistake dept
This is really unfortunate news. It really wasn't that long ago that we were praising Twitter for how it dealt with the issue of third parties building on its ecosystem. The company took a very permissive approach, letting other providers do all sorts of things that really helped to make Twitter much more valuable in the long run, including create a whole variety of client apps that really pushed Twitter. I know that my own recognition of why Twitter was valuable didn't really come about until I started using some third party apps, that let me do much, much more and get much more value out of Twitter. However, on Friday, Twitter appeared to want to cut off all that goodwill and value adding by telling third parties (effectively) to stop making Twitter apps. It appears the company will allow a few legacy apps to be grandfathered in, but new apps-makers are forewarned to stay away. This comes a little while after Twitter shut down some third party apps it claimed were "misbehaving."The reasoning behind this new prohibition are, frankly, ridiculous and totally unbelievable. Specifically, it claims that "people are confused" by these third party apps. Of course, in my case, and in the case of almost everyone I know who uses a third party app (and I don't know anyone who actually uses Twitter's official app), we weren't confused, we were enlightened by those third party apps providing much more context and value to Twitter. The new rules basically remove a large amount of the flexibility that the existing third party providers can use to add more value to Twitter. This is Twitter both trying to control the developer market and to take it back over itself. This is a dangerous move that could seriously hurt the developer ecosystem around Twitter, and push people to alternatives. Even if developers think they can live within the rules, these recent changes might get them to think twice about building on Twitter since it could change the rules further. As per usual, Mathew Ingram summarizes nicely why this is a bad business move, even if it's designed to benefit Twitter's business:
Without the help of third-party apps like Tweetie and Tweetdeck, the company likely would not have been nearly as successful at building the network (and a ready-made client like Tweetie certainly wouldn’t have been sitting there waiting to be acquired). But the ecosystem didn’t just build demand for the network -- it also helped build and distribute the behavior that now makes Twitter so valuable: the @ mentions, the direct messages, re-Tweets and so on, none of which were Twitter’s idea originally. That created a huge amount of goodwill, and led to the (apparently mistaken) idea of an ecosystem.The company may get away with this in the short-term, but this is a hugely risky long term move that seems to have a high likelihood of backfiring. Going against those who helped get you where you are is a very dangerous move. For a company that used to seem so welcoming, it's a pretty rapid about face.
It’s all very well for Twitter to claim ownership of all those things now, since it is their platform. And obviously there are businesses that can get away with being arbitrary or dictatorial -- Apple is well known for such behavior, after all, and it is one of the most valuable companies on the planet. But this only works over the longer term if your product is so unique and compelling that people will put up with it. Is Twitter in that category?
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Filed Under: developers, ecosystem, ownership
Companies: twitter
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Following the Apple business model
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Twitter stopped being developer friendly the second they discontinued the easy-to-use REST API for an incomplete untested version of oAuth.
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Re:
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Danged kids!
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Wait...
This is no different than a third party app.
Remove the button, please.
Then, tell all websites to remove the button.
Once Twitter sees its usage drop like a stone, then perhaps this will be the only way they'll learn their lesson.
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Re: Ping.fm supports identi.ca
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StatusNet / Identi.ca
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Re: StatusNet / Identi.ca
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Re: StatusNet / Identi.ca
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Re: StatusNet / Identi.ca
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Re: Re: StatusNet / Identi.ca
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Re: Re: Re: StatusNet / Identi.ca
And this is the whole point. With the social network stuffs (at least, the stuff that survives), it is *you* that defines your interwebs.
Don't want to hear about someone who constantly tweets their starbucks orders? Drop them!
What the social interwebs offers is Real Intelligence Filtering. Follow the right people, and information that *you* want, that you don't know about or even know you want, flows to you. And if you aren't drinking from the hose when the news is flowing, if it is a fleeting blip of info whose Best Before date goes by before you get online, it is obsolescent material that does not clog up your inbox.
This is real-time, crowd-sourced RSS feed of the entire internet. Google is great at finding what you know you want. Social webospheres are great at bringing you things you don't know to look for.
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...
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There are VERY few people on this planet...
Twitter...is disposable.
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Well, there's some truth to it
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Re: Well, there's some truth to it
I for one will quit using twitter if I'm stuck using the stock Twitter app. Many of the third-party apps are much better, and each has its own charm. Thanks to these apps, Twitter has become much more of the experience I want, instead of the experience they think I should have.
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Sad News...
I was really very impressed by the power that a public forum like Twitter can create. Hopefully the company will come around, but if we're all forced to exodus to a new place, the same power will only be preserved by everyone moving to the SAME new place.
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Twitter killing the golden goose
What I've been waiting for is an aggressive microblogging competitor to come along. I've been disappointed that statusnet or friendfeed hasn't stepped up more strongly.
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Re: Twitter killing the golden goose
Perhaps help crystallize it, and make it hardened for the future.
Or something like that. Let Twitter (and the rest of the world) know that there is more than just Twitter in the micro-blogging arena.
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So when?
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Twitter?
Check out the trends:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=twitter%2C+facebook&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&am p;sort=0
One thing this reveals to me is that the news reference volume, on par with Facebook, far outweighs the actual traffic. Of course it does, it's favoured by the media as another bullhorn and they're biased towards its purpose but the person on the street can't really be bothered. So we have artificially inflated cultural value that, to me, offers little besides an echo chamber of noise.
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Re: Twitter?
Follow people who tweet good content. Don't follow the bad.
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Re: Re: Twitter?
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I know the answer! Because that's common sense, and common sense don't make money. ;)
Either way, I don't really care. I found the few twitter apps I tried to be limited. Only so many tweets showed up in the history.
I eventually ended up using an RSS feed reader as my twitter client. It's not perfect, but much more powerful. Much more results and an unlimited tweet history.
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