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This is a situation where one developer had a special exception carved out for them for a non-commercial project that everyone thought was cool. That access pe

This is a situation where one developer had a special exception carved out for them for a non-commercial project that everyone thought was cool. That access persisted for three years until someone made a decision that giving free access to something that normally they charge quite a lot of money for is not worth it. Twitter offers several free endpoints for developers, including search, streaming, a raw sample of tweets, and the like. They all have rate limits and the like attached, but they're real, free, access to their data. For people who want bigger, broader, deeper access, they sell access to that data. That's been the case for the last few years. In this case, Emojitracker unfortunately falls into the cracks in between, where they need deeper access to do what they want, but it's not a commercial enterprise. I agree, it would be nice of Twitter to continue giving Emojitracker free access, but are they obligated to do that? They are a business, and providing access to millions of Tweets for free seems like an unfair obligation to ask them to continue indefinitely.

pyre 11y ago
> They are a business, and providing access to millions of Tweets for free seems like an unfair obligation to ask them to continue indefinitely. While not indefinitely, it would certainly help the case to just public a cost-benefit analysis of how much Emojitracker's access was costing Twitter (though not in terms of "lost revenue" based on what Emojitracker would have been paying for that access).
- mattzito 11y ago
  I don't see that as Twitter's obligation. When someone does you a favor, or makes an exception for you, it's nice if they give you a reason when they end it, but it's not their responsibility.
  - pyre 11y ago
    No, it's not their responsibility. I'm just saying that PR-wise it could have been a good move to just say, "Hey, it's costing us $X/month to give you an exception for this access. Sorry, but we can't justify that cost going forward." Are you saying that it would have been a bad move for them to say that?
- qubex 11y ago
  Who says they didn't perform the kind of cost/benefit analysis you mention and estimated that it wasn't worth the effort? And if that was their estimation, despite our (NH denizens) collective annoyance, maybe they were right. Maybe providing free access made prospective paying customers less likely to pay for firehose access, or a slew of not-for-profit organisations requesting free firehose access citing emojitracker as a precedent. There's a myriad of hypotheticals and whomever made this decision is not necessarily irrational... it just depends on what constitutes their utility function.
  - pyre 11y ago
    I was saying that maybe it would have been a good idea for them to publish that analysis publicly, or just to emojitracker (where they would presumably publish it for Twitter).
eli 11y ago
The comment you are replying did not say or imply Twitter was obligated to do anything. But continuing to provide this noncommercial API access for free indefinitely is exactly what I think they should do and I'm a little disappointed that they don't agree. Twitter isn't wrong here, they're just assholes.
- mattzito 11y ago
  They do still have noncommercial API access for free (who knows for how long). What is going away is this individual's special access.
  - eli 11y ago
    Right, I think the individual should continue to get special access forever. It's a terrible idea to cut off people doing something cool with your platform because of what? Saving the negligible cost of supporting their volume of API calls? A message to developers that rules are strictly enforced? Not exactly a PR win.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      >Right, I think the individual should continue to get special access forever. It's a terrible idea to cut off people doing something cool with your platform because of what? Because "special access" means free in this case. Do you realize you are arguing that a customer should have free access forever, while others customers pay? Do you know what type of liability that is for any business?
      - dangrossman 11y ago
        There's nothing unusual about charging commercial users of a product while not charging non-commercial users. Academic and non-profit discounts, down to making your product free to them, are extremely commonplace. There's nothing unusual about sponsoring interesting projects, or making special arrangements when it's mutually beneficial. Giving a tiny customer free access forever, and getting a bunch of goodwill associated with their brand in return, is not a liability, it's good business.
wslh 11y ago
> For people who want bigger, broader, deeper access, they sell access to that data. That's been the case for the last few years. Can I pay $ 100 extra per month for more access?
- mattzito 11y ago
  Most of it is based on volume - I have no idea what the entry point is for some of these things, but there are increments of data or access that are around that much. But no, I doubt you can pony up $100/mo and get a meaningful amount of data.
  - wslh 11y ago
    That's the issue with Twitter and this is their fault. Google was revolutionary when they introduced a way to advertise (yes, AdWords) for only $ 5 while others (e.g: Yahoo) required thousand dollars as an entry point. I know it is not easy to develop/set up such system and deal with millions of retail customers but... in 2016? You can even do this with Twitter Advertising so I don't understand why they can't solve this for their API.
    - yeahrightfam 11y ago
      I noticed a similar thing with Tuenti some years ago. I wanted to advertise something targeting only Spain and began to inquire about their ad services. They did offer advertising in their social network but it was really difficult to actually reach somebody that could help you with that (it wasn't automated, btw). After a very brief email exchange their response was pretty much "we don't care about less than a few million dollars", I was honestly surprised but eventually settled on "Well, ok, I'll just use Facebook ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" 4 years into it, and they're dead meat. (Ok, they pivoted on to some kind of VoIP service with social features or whatever, so they're not technically dead yet). Tuenti: A social network in Spain that used to enjoy a really good market share in that country.
- Xorlev 11y ago
  It's very expensive. You have to be careful to only register high signal / low noise terms or risk a massive bill. To get the data emojitracker has would be tens of thousands a month or more.
forgetsusername 11y ago
>That access persisted for three years until someone made a decision that giving free access to something that normally they charge quite a lot of money for is not worth it. Right. The point here is that the decision might be stupid. It's fodder for exactly this type of a story, while Twitter is pushing for improved relations with developers and trying determine its future as a going concern. Of course they aren't obligated to do continue to provide free access, in the same sense that I'm not obligated to use their platform. But it might be in their best interest (in both cases). For all the acclaim that Mr. Dorsey gets as a CEO, Twitter is a great idea but a basket case of a public company.
- yeahrightfam 11y ago
  tl,dr; of the whole situation, letting the guy in would have cost them nothing, kicking him out will be very expensive
pfooti 11y ago
If it was the case that emojitracker was reselling that api access, I could see cutting it off. But I think that a rich, robust ecosystem would flourish more around a platform that provided free API access to noncommercial projects. Of course, it's conceivable that this API access costs twitter a significant amount of money - it is a lot of data, after all. Even a low cost could be written off as advertising within the platform. "Look at the cool stuff we could build on this API, let's make a commercial product and pay twitter for access!"
- aioprisan 11y ago
  > But I think that a rich, robust ecosystem would flourish more around a platform that provided free API access to noncommercial projects. This. Also, if API access costs Twitter a significant amount of money, they shouldn't be in the platform business and shut down their API entirely.

pyre 11y ago

> They are a business, and providing access to millions of Tweets for free seems like an unfair obligation to ask them to continue indefinitely. While not indefinitely, it would certainly help the case to just public a cost-benefit analysis of how much Emojitracker's access was costing Twitter (though not in terms of "lost revenue" based on what Emojitracker would have been paying for that access).

mattzito 11y ago
I don't see that as Twitter's obligation. When someone does you a favor, or makes an exception for you, it's nice if they give you a reason when they end it, but it's not their responsibility.
- pyre 11y ago
  No, it's not their responsibility. I'm just saying that PR-wise it could have been a good move to just say, "Hey, it's costing us $X/month to give you an exception for this access. Sorry, but we can't justify that cost going forward." Are you saying that it would have been a bad move for them to say that?
qubex 11y ago
Who says they didn't perform the kind of cost/benefit analysis you mention and estimated that it wasn't worth the effort? And if that was their estimation, despite our (NH denizens) collective annoyance, maybe they were right. Maybe providing free access made prospective paying customers less likely to pay for firehose access, or a slew of not-for-profit organisations requesting free firehose access citing emojitracker as a precedent. There's a myriad of hypotheticals and whomever made this decision is not necessarily irrational... it just depends on what constitutes their utility function.
- pyre 11y ago
  I was saying that maybe it would have been a good idea for them to publish that analysis publicly, or just to emojitracker (where they would presumably publish it for Twitter).

eli 11y ago

The comment you are replying did not say or imply Twitter was obligated to do anything. But continuing to provide this noncommercial API access for free indefinitely is exactly what I think they should do and I'm a little disappointed that they don't agree. Twitter isn't wrong here, they're just assholes.

mattzito 11y ago
They do still have noncommercial API access for free (who knows for how long). What is going away is this individual's special access.
- eli 11y ago
  Right, I think the individual should continue to get special access forever. It's a terrible idea to cut off people doing something cool with your platform because of what? Saving the negligible cost of supporting their volume of API calls? A message to developers that rules are strictly enforced? Not exactly a PR win.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    >Right, I think the individual should continue to get special access forever. It's a terrible idea to cut off people doing something cool with your platform because of what? Because "special access" means free in this case. Do you realize you are arguing that a customer should have free access forever, while others customers pay? Do you know what type of liability that is for any business?
    - dangrossman 11y ago
      There's nothing unusual about charging commercial users of a product while not charging non-commercial users. Academic and non-profit discounts, down to making your product free to them, are extremely commonplace. There's nothing unusual about sponsoring interesting projects, or making special arrangements when it's mutually beneficial. Giving a tiny customer free access forever, and getting a bunch of goodwill associated with their brand in return, is not a liability, it's good business.

wslh 11y ago

> For people who want bigger, broader, deeper access, they sell access to that data. That's been the case for the last few years. Can I pay $ 100 extra per month for more access?

mattzito 11y ago
Most of it is based on volume - I have no idea what the entry point is for some of these things, but there are increments of data or access that are around that much. But no, I doubt you can pony up $100/mo and get a meaningful amount of data.
- wslh 11y ago
  That's the issue with Twitter and this is their fault. Google was revolutionary when they introduced a way to advertise (yes, AdWords) for only $ 5 while others (e.g: Yahoo) required thousand dollars as an entry point. I know it is not easy to develop/set up such system and deal with millions of retail customers but... in 2016? You can even do this with Twitter Advertising so I don't understand why they can't solve this for their API.
  - yeahrightfam 11y ago
    I noticed a similar thing with Tuenti some years ago. I wanted to advertise something targeting only Spain and began to inquire about their ad services. They did offer advertising in their social network but it was really difficult to actually reach somebody that could help you with that (it wasn't automated, btw). After a very brief email exchange their response was pretty much "we don't care about less than a few million dollars", I was honestly surprised but eventually settled on "Well, ok, I'll just use Facebook ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" 4 years into it, and they're dead meat. (Ok, they pivoted on to some kind of VoIP service with social features or whatever, so they're not technically dead yet). Tuenti: A social network in Spain that used to enjoy a really good market share in that country.
Xorlev 11y ago
It's very expensive. You have to be careful to only register high signal / low noise terms or risk a massive bill. To get the data emojitracker has would be tens of thousands a month or more.

forgetsusername 11y ago

>That access persisted for three years until someone made a decision that giving free access to something that normally they charge quite a lot of money for is not worth it. Right. The point here is that the decision might be stupid. It's fodder for exactly this type of a story, while Twitter is pushing for improved relations with developers and trying determine its future as a going concern. Of course they aren't obligated to do continue to provide free access, in the same sense that I'm not obligated to use their platform. But it might be in their best interest (in both cases). For all the acclaim that Mr. Dorsey gets as a CEO, Twitter is a great idea but a basket case of a public company.

yeahrightfam 11y ago
tl,dr; of the whole situation, letting the guy in would have cost them nothing, kicking him out will be very expensive

pfooti 11y ago

If it was the case that emojitracker was reselling that api access, I could see cutting it off. But I think that a rich, robust ecosystem would flourish more around a platform that provided free API access to noncommercial projects. Of course, it's conceivable that this API access costs twitter a significant amount of money - it is a lot of data, after all. Even a low cost could be written off as advertising within the platform. "Look at the cool stuff we could build on this API, let's make a commercial product and pay twitter for access!"

aioprisan 11y ago
> But I think that a rich, robust ecosystem would flourish more around a platform that provided free API access to noncommercial projects. This. Also, if API access costs Twitter a significant amount of money, they shouldn't be in the platform business and shut down their API entirely.