The interesting thing about Twitter compared to e.g. Facebook is that the social graph is very weak. I (and in anecdata, many people I know) use it to follow some "big names", and a splattering of smaller names, for broadcast information. I occasionally send something out, but it's not a strong set of connections. The network effect is thus minimal; migrating over to app.net would be easy, as I'm not that bothered that I have exactly the same followers/followees. When the pain of the service outweighs it's smallish value, I'll just jump ship.
Even more people out there are just passive followers of celebrity names. Facebook or similar could launch a "Flitter" that did everything they wanted, and get a mass migration pretty easily - once people get annoyed enough to start looking around. If Twitter continue on this path, that threshold will be reached much sooner than I originally expected.
If the problem is that they can't figure out how to monetize third party apps, the answer is staring them right in the face.
So, Twitter is already going to dictate what the tweet view looks like. In-stream ads won't be much more than tweets. So why not stipulate that an app MUST show in-stream ads in a given format? If the app wishes to not show ads or to use twitter for more of an "infrastructure-like" purpose, then there should be some kind of use-fee-based pricing model on the API side. Sure, people might bitch about the high API costs, but it's better than nothing.
Or maybe that was their plan all along: throw out these API changes threatening to cut everyone completely off, then eventually "concede" with new ad-supported and use-fee API rules and have everyone applaud them for "listening to their customers".
You'll have to forgive me for being more cynical than normal... but with this twitter stuff lately it just seems like we've all entered into the Twilight Zone of Suck.
No need for this complexity. They could just revoke API access for apps that don't show ads per their guidelines. It'd be easy to catch any Twitter client with a significant user base that isn't showing ads properly.
At the end of the day though solutions like this just aren't realistic. If Twitter's going to show ads and other content like cards in their stream, advertisers have to have confidence that the content and presentation will be preserved. The only way to truly do this effectively is to control how your product is presented in all cases.
The problem isn't that Twitter's making these changes. The problem is that Twitter's only getting around to doing this now, years after a vibrant ecosystem of third-party clients has been well established. No one complains that there isn't a rich market for third-party Facebook clients, even though the Facebook app historically has been pretty substandard. Facebook, wisely, never relinquished control over their platform.
Twitter, as ever, is cleaning up for previous incompetence, trying to clean up a mess that never should have existed. How could they not have assigned one or two people to build an iPhone client the minute the iPhone SDK was announced in 2008? How blind do you have to be to not anticipate that mobile will be huge for Twitter, a service originally engineered around being used over SMS?
Watching Twitter bungle issue after issue over the years gives the distinct impression that Twitter is successful in spite of their executive management, not because of it.
Isn't it more: No more free data for 3rd party clients? (past a certain amount) Companies can still buy unlimited realtime data through twitter's monitization child DataSift. Meaning the death of free 3rd party apps. Maybe now that they have to charge a good chunk we will get better 3rd party apps?
Why is this a negative? To a first approximation, the "big names" you follow are an indication of your interests, and advertisers are very comfortable with broadcast media.
Following anyone also indicates a degree of commitment that simply hitting a "Like" button does not: You're willing to see everything that person/business Tweets.
I may sound like a broken record, but I am incredibly disappointed in Twitter's behavior, especially given the great disparity in the feature sets of TweetBot and the official Twitter iOS client. (and don't get me started on the state of Twitter clients for Android...)
Actually, that would be a rather scary end-game for Twitter: completely losing control of their delivery platform.
- remove yourself from google search -> check
- annoy any 3rd party app makers -> check
- have a unreliable service -> check
- have little product innovation -> check
- twitter already has a huge community -> check
- twitter is known to normal people -> check
- integrated into traditional media -> check
- there are no alternatives with a comparable amount of members -> check
- All of your points don't matter for normal users -> check
What competitors are there to twitter?
- App.net: Probably too expensive for the majority to todays twitter users
- Google+: No good clients, too hard user discovery (no way to find users via convenient handles), real-name focussed.
- Facebook: Privacy Nightmare, real-name focussed, insisting on a limited amount of mutual friendships instead of breadcasting
- identi.ca/status.net: Would be perfect, but nobody seem to be using it
Considering all this, I would assume twitter is going to stay.
It pains me to watch something like that though...
Just because it wouldn't generate any media attention or am I missing something?
I think this vindicates most of the people who raised a big stink about the API policy changes back then.
Edit: They're also planning to create a Twitter-compatible API, so a vendor like Tapbots could simply change the endpoint in their code and support rstat.us as well. https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us/issues/562
