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Suppose twitter had become a giant json firehose, and you could listen to it and, for example, build a jobs listings website from the jobadvert microformatted t

Suppose twitter had become a giant json firehose, and you could listen to it and, for example, build a jobs listings website from the jobadvert microformatted tweets. It would end up full of fake job spam, and the listeners might want quality filters. I can imagine that you might pay to validate your identity as not-a-spammer.

loceng 10y ago
How would "Twitter" capture that value and not some third-party platform who and offers those filter services? The value and revenue isn't with Twitter then, so then how does Twitter pay bills? Or am I seeing this in a different light than you do?
- dasil003 10y ago
  As far as I can tell a simple freemium model would have worked. You charge for the firehose and anything high volume, but you give a generous free allowance to keep the grassroots ecosystem healthy. They could have played all the same pricing games that Facebook is now playing, except across a much wider range of channels. I'm not saying it was a slam dunk, but a lot of talk about this back in 2007/2008 and there was a palpable excitement about Twitter apps. Within a few years the media-company mindset had taken grasp, the valuations and expectations exploded, and now we have boring old Twitter which is still a damn cool thing in its own right, but which is seen as a failure because of a combination of pedestrian vision and mismanaged expectations.
- macca321 10y ago
  I'm not saying it would have been a good business decision for Twitter, but it would have been pretty neat for developers and users.
drusepth 10y ago
Wouldn't spammers (assuming they're spamming to make money, and therefore likely make more than $0 per spam) also just pay money to be validated in the same way?
- loceng 10y ago
  Interesting thought. Legitimate posters could hopefully could out price spammers.
codingmyway 10y ago
They could add several seconds of latency by default and sell high speed premium to trading bots. Humans don't care about a few seconds.
- loceng 10y ago
  Humans definitely care about a few seconds, interesting strategy though.

loceng 10y ago

How would "Twitter" capture that value and not some third-party platform who and offers those filter services? The value and revenue isn't with Twitter then, so then how does Twitter pay bills? Or am I seeing this in a different light than you do?

dasil003 10y ago
As far as I can tell a simple freemium model would have worked. You charge for the firehose and anything high volume, but you give a generous free allowance to keep the grassroots ecosystem healthy. They could have played all the same pricing games that Facebook is now playing, except across a much wider range of channels. I'm not saying it was a slam dunk, but a lot of talk about this back in 2007/2008 and there was a palpable excitement about Twitter apps. Within a few years the media-company mindset had taken grasp, the valuations and expectations exploded, and now we have boring old Twitter which is still a damn cool thing in its own right, but which is seen as a failure because of a combination of pedestrian vision and mismanaged expectations.
macca321 10y ago
I'm not saying it would have been a good business decision for Twitter, but it would have been pretty neat for developers and users.

drusepth 10y ago

Wouldn't spammers (assuming they're spamming to make money, and therefore likely make more than $0 per spam) also just pay money to be validated in the same way?

loceng 10y ago
Interesting thought. Legitimate posters could hopefully could out price spammers.

codingmyway 10y ago

They could add several seconds of latency by default and sell high speed premium to trading bots. Humans don't care about a few seconds.

loceng 10y ago
Humans definitely care about a few seconds, interesting strategy though.