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The single most important thing that Twitter can do to encourage developers to build on their platform is to completely and unambiguously align interests. If a

by crabasa 11y ago

The single most important thing that Twitter can do to encourage developers to build on their platform is to completely and unambiguously align interests. If a developer is successful, Twitter should be successful, and vice versa. This is infinitely more reliable than any promise and is how all successful application platforms operate.

firasd 11y ago
Exactly. The problem isn’t that we can’t believe Dorsey’s intentions, it’s that Dorsey’s intentions don’t necessarily create the reality of Twitter’s future. Whether it’s Twitter or Facebook (or others), these companies will keep changing their product and business and thus consumers of their API will always be on quicksand.
vijayr 11y ago
That would be solid business sense. If developers are successful on Twitter's platform, they wouldn't easily leave for the next shiny thing. Customers also would benefit, as products won't disappear overnight because twitter cut off access. It is a win-win for everyone.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  But how do developers being successful on Twitter's platform translate to Twitter making money? Developers aren't really willing to pay for access to Twitter, and I don't think many of them want to show Twitter's ads, as that removes a way for them to make money by offering an ad free version, and makes offering their own ads that much less unpalatable.
  - billmalarky 11y ago
    >But how do developers being successful on Twitter's platform translate to Twitter making money? Same way 3rd party developers helped originally grow twitter. A variety of twitter 3rd party tools drives user engagement with twitter. That data most likely has value that twitter simply hasn't figured out how to extract efficiently yet (slapping ads in the feed is an easy monetization strategy, not necessarily a good one).
jameshart 11y ago
That's the problem. If anybody finds a way to build a successful business on Twitter, their interests are by definition not aligned with Twitter's, because Twitter themselves have not yet figured out how to build a successful business on Twitter. Losing more of Twitter's money to make third parties successful is not a basis for an alignment of interests.
- crabasa 11y ago
  That is only true given the current state of Twitter's product and business model. I think it's a stretch to say that they can't make the necessary changes to align interests. In fact, I think they're dead in the water if they can't. And Jack knows that.
  - rfrank 11y ago
    That doesn't seem like a great incentive for a dev to work with Twitter's API until they figure that out...
  - tracker1 11y ago
    Twitter could have gone to a royalty basis for API access from fairly early on. If they required that developers with more than 100 users agree to pay $1:user:year, or %10 percent of gross receipts, whichever is greater, then app developers would have to have some means of making money, and the flowback would be to twitter, while still allowing for experimental apps to continue being developed. Twitter cut off their nose despite their face here. Or for that matter, twitter itself could charge end users $10-15/year for being able to access their own account via API (anything but twitter's own client), and limit to X queries per day/month (something a real user is unlikely to exceed).. that would help keep the spam bots at bay.
mrweasel 11y ago
>If a developer is successful, Twitter should be successful, and vice versa. They would still need to find a way to make money, which was exactly why Twitter started to limit the 3rd. party developers to begin with. They hoped that tighter control over their eco-system would help selling more ads. What would developers build on top of Twitter that can make Twitter money? I don't question that you can build interesting and wonderful apps, using Twitter as infrastructure or as a data source, but that just burdens Twitter further. Either developers need to pay Twitter for access to their platform, or developers need to allow Twitter to push ads. Alternatively developers and Twitter can data-mine the crap out of their users and split the profit. I just don't see what product Twitter could push that will cover their operational cost. Twitter is a publicly listed business, success is measured solely on profit.
- mattzito 11y ago
  So, you can pay Twitter for access, and people do just that. We pay quite a chunk of a money for a significant percentage of the global stream of Tweets, and we use that to do analytics and sell those analytics to customers. Now, we also pull data from thousands of other providers, so it's not like we have all of our eggs in one basket, but we have a great business going where twitter is a significant percentage of the total volume of our data. Twitter also has certain advantages as a data source that many other providers don't.
- digisth 11y ago
  Top of the list would be low-cost filtered API access. Much cheaper than the firehose, with commensurately less data (by keyword(s), location, etc. instead of the whole shebang.) The current pricing opacity and inability to just sign up online like you can with Parse (https://parse.com/plans https://parse.com/plans) means far fewer people as customers. My understanding is that API deals are company-by-company. A list of general suggestions for them: https://medium.com/@sthware/suggestions-for-twitter-helloworld-dfdae6f41060#.88k4307na https://medium.com/@sthware/suggestions-for-twitter-hellowor... Edit: I'll add that if relations get repaired now and then broken again, I don’t think they’ll be fixable a third time. They need to get this right, IMO.
- waterlesscloud 11y ago
grrowl 11y ago
Twitter should be similar to the blockchain, in that it should be a huge, transparent platform freely usable for most applications.

by crabasa 11y ago

firasd 11y ago

Exactly. The problem isn’t that we can’t believe Dorsey’s intentions, it’s that Dorsey’s intentions don’t necessarily create the reality of Twitter’s future. Whether it’s Twitter or Facebook (or others), these companies will keep changing their product and business and thus consumers of their API will always be on quicksand.

vijayr 11y ago

That would be solid business sense. If developers are successful on Twitter's platform, they wouldn't easily leave for the next shiny thing. Customers also would benefit, as products won't disappear overnight because twitter cut off access. It is a win-win for everyone.

s73v3r 11y ago
But how do developers being successful on Twitter's platform translate to Twitter making money? Developers aren't really willing to pay for access to Twitter, and I don't think many of them want to show Twitter's ads, as that removes a way for them to make money by offering an ad free version, and makes offering their own ads that much less unpalatable.
- billmalarky 11y ago
  >But how do developers being successful on Twitter's platform translate to Twitter making money? Same way 3rd party developers helped originally grow twitter. A variety of twitter 3rd party tools drives user engagement with twitter. That data most likely has value that twitter simply hasn't figured out how to extract efficiently yet (slapping ads in the feed is an easy monetization strategy, not necessarily a good one).

jameshart 11y ago

That's the problem. If anybody finds a way to build a successful business on Twitter, their interests are by definition not aligned with Twitter's, because Twitter themselves have not yet figured out how to build a successful business on Twitter. Losing more of Twitter's money to make third parties successful is not a basis for an alignment of interests.

crabasa 11y ago
That is only true given the current state of Twitter's product and business model. I think it's a stretch to say that they can't make the necessary changes to align interests. In fact, I think they're dead in the water if they can't. And Jack knows that.
- rfrank 11y ago
  That doesn't seem like a great incentive for a dev to work with Twitter's API until they figure that out...
- tracker1 11y ago
  Twitter could have gone to a royalty basis for API access from fairly early on. If they required that developers with more than 100 users agree to pay $1:user:year, or %10 percent of gross receipts, whichever is greater, then app developers would have to have some means of making money, and the flowback would be to twitter, while still allowing for experimental apps to continue being developed. Twitter cut off their nose despite their face here. Or for that matter, twitter itself could charge end users $10-15/year for being able to access their own account via API (anything but twitter's own client), and limit to X queries per day/month (something a real user is unlikely to exceed).. that would help keep the spam bots at bay.

mrweasel 11y ago

>If a developer is successful, Twitter should be successful, and vice versa. They would still need to find a way to make money, which was exactly why Twitter started to limit the 3rd. party developers to begin with. They hoped that tighter control over their eco-system would help selling more ads. What would developers build on top of Twitter that can make Twitter money? I don't question that you can build interesting and wonderful apps, using Twitter as infrastructure or as a data source, but that just burdens Twitter further. Either developers need to pay Twitter for access to their platform, or developers need to allow Twitter to push ads. Alternatively developers and Twitter can data-mine the crap out of their users and split the profit. I just don't see what product Twitter could push that will cover their operational cost. Twitter is a publicly listed business, success is measured solely on profit.

mattzito 11y ago
So, you can pay Twitter for access, and people do just that. We pay quite a chunk of a money for a significant percentage of the global stream of Tweets, and we use that to do analytics and sell those analytics to customers. Now, we also pull data from thousands of other providers, so it's not like we have all of our eggs in one basket, but we have a great business going where twitter is a significant percentage of the total volume of our data. Twitter also has certain advantages as a data source that many other providers don't.
digisth 11y ago
Top of the list would be low-cost filtered API access. Much cheaper than the firehose, with commensurately less data (by keyword(s), location, etc. instead of the whole shebang.) The current pricing opacity and inability to just sign up online like you can with Parse (https://parse.com/plans https://parse.com/plans) means far fewer people as customers. My understanding is that API deals are company-by-company. A list of general suggestions for them: https://medium.com/@sthware/suggestions-for-twitter-helloworld-dfdae6f41060#.88k4307na https://medium.com/@sthware/suggestions-for-twitter-hellowor... Edit: I'll add that if relations get repaired now and then broken again, I don’t think they’ll be fixable a third time. They need to get this right, IMO.
waterlesscloud 11y ago

grrowl 11y ago

Twitter should be similar to the blockchain, in that it should be a huge, transparent platform freely usable for most applications.