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A big history lesson and a big WARNING for anyone who is thinking of building anything with Twitter's APIs. Once this company, long ago, encouraged developers t

A big history lesson and a big WARNING for anyone who is thinking of building anything with Twitter's APIs. Once this company, long ago, encouraged developers to use their APIs to build products and utilities. Developers heeded the call and flocked to the company's APIs. They built new clients and innovative solutions to make Twitter truly useful. Twitter grew fast with the developer's help and the developer's themselves did well. Many raised millions of dollars in VC funding to make vibrant companies around the Twitter ecosystem. Things were going well. Then Twitter became greedy. Twitter decided to destroy the very companies that grew Twitter's user base. They changed their TOS monthly outlawing various product categories. They banned clients. They put restrictive quotas on their APIs to starve out companies so they could reap their revenue for themselves. Hundreds of products fell. Millions of developer hours were lost. The Twitter ecosystem shrank and so did Twitter's user growth. So if you're thinking about building anything with this company then be warned. If anything you've built is remotely popular, then it is only a matter of time before they come to pillage whatever you've built.

sksksk 9y ago
@replies and hashtags (one of the most successful features of twitter) came from third party apps,
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
minikites 9y ago
Many things that make Twitter special were invented by the developers you mention: http://furbo.org/2011/03/11/twitterrific-firsts/ http://furbo.org/2011/03/11/twitterrific-firsts/ > First use of “tweet” to describe an update > First use of a bird icon. > First to support replies and conversations (in collaboration with Twitter engineering.) I think that's why this discussion thread is so negative, Twitter benefited immensely from the work of third party developers and then told them to go pound sand.
Pigo 9y ago
This is why I coined the phrase "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" j/k So having a big release and advertising these 3rd party tools could be completely motivated by a need for someone else's innovation? Or are there businesses left standing who are innovating and successful with their services? They've worked great for me in the past, but I've never done anything beyond using them for OAuth or showing a hashtag list of tweets.
s3r3nity 9y ago
As much as I agree with you, I wonder if the changes in leadership at the company since then might mean a different direction. Reading their blog posts, it seems like a "reboot" of sorts. I am in the camp that still thinks Twitter is an important tool: both as a communication medium, as well as a competitor to Facebook/Snapchat/etc. Whether or not this vision for the API platform plays out as history repeating itself, or as a way for Twitter to continue to grow - remains to be seen. But I definitely root for them to try and try again when they fail. To OPs point, definitely tread lightly at first, and don't bet your whole company on Twitter's APIs. I'm excited to see where this goes.
egfx 9y ago
This! And I should know. My Twitter to Facebook client. http://2fb.me http://2fb.me was crippled by Twitter for trying to distribute tweets. The main purpose of Twitter and a Twitter api is distribution or so I thought. Facebook on the other hand has been a great friend. And the Facebook page gets a few new followers everyday even though the app has been reporpused. Facebook.com/toTwitter
ksk 9y ago
I agree with your sentiment, but it applies to a lot of popular companies, especially debt financed companies that don't charge their users. When they stick their hand in the VC cookie jar, the necrotic hand on the other side, grabs them and pulls them in.
saurik 9y ago
Twitter also did something that I find particularly interesting: they somehow convinced developers that you needed them to bless your app and provide APIs to build a client that accesses their service, even though those credentials must be distributed to the public with your client. To people like me who are old enough to have dealt with AOL, the idea that developers are willing to buy into this fiction is absolutely insane: if the official Twitter client can do it, then so can your client, and there is nothing Twitter can do to stop you that doesn't also break their client (which they are generally less willing to do than change their API on short notice!). As far as I can tell the only thing that enforces this is what should amount to an antitrust level of collusion between the mega-companies to restrict access to products (via services such as the Apple App Store) that do things that the other mega-companies dislike, as it is in all of their best interests to maintain this same fiction. The reality is that client-side API keys are totally meaningless and make no sense: in an attempt to believe they make sense some developers then start to believe other crazy things like "if I compile a token into my program other people can't read it as it is compiled" or to insist "there must be some way to encrypt my binary to make sure that other people can't get my API key", but this kind of broken thought only happens due to a broken premise :/. (That said, it isn't 100% clear to me that if someone released a true Twitter client Apple would remove it, so if someone disagrees with that premise I am all ears: that is simply the only theoretical mechanism I can see that would seem to enforce this, and I feel like I have heard of this happening before, but AFAIK the random apps in the App Store for abusing Tindr are all based on reverse engineering the true API for the service, but it is also possible that Apple cares less about helping Tindr or that Tindr has a different internal mentality and culture surrounding this kind of thing; or it could even be the case that these now have been removed and I haven't noticed yet as I don't really pay much attention to track them, or even that I am wrong and they are somehow more indirect in their implementation.)
- hbbio 9y ago
  Once I considered writing a Twitter client and the only reasonable option was to implement a proxy that would hold the API key... Hopefully I ended up not wasting time building this!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
chairmanwow 9y ago
I have heard rumblings about this from a few old salty dogs, but I never heard such a detailed explanation of what actually happened with Twitter + developers. While this API does seem exciting, I'm way more hesitant to create anything given the company's history.

sksksk 9y ago

@replies and hashtags (one of the most successful features of twitter) came from third party apps,

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

minikites 9y ago

Many things that make Twitter special were invented by the developers you mention: http://furbo.org/2011/03/11/twitterrific-firsts/ http://furbo.org/2011/03/11/twitterrific-firsts/ > First use of “tweet” to describe an update > First use of a bird icon. > First to support replies and conversations (in collaboration with Twitter engineering.) I think that's why this discussion thread is so negative, Twitter benefited immensely from the work of third party developers and then told them to go pound sand.

Pigo 9y ago

This is why I coined the phrase "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" j/k So having a big release and advertising these 3rd party tools could be completely motivated by a need for someone else's innovation? Or are there businesses left standing who are innovating and successful with their services? They've worked great for me in the past, but I've never done anything beyond using them for OAuth or showing a hashtag list of tweets.

s3r3nity 9y ago

As much as I agree with you, I wonder if the changes in leadership at the company since then might mean a different direction. Reading their blog posts, it seems like a "reboot" of sorts. I am in the camp that still thinks Twitter is an important tool: both as a communication medium, as well as a competitor to Facebook/Snapchat/etc. Whether or not this vision for the API platform plays out as history repeating itself, or as a way for Twitter to continue to grow - remains to be seen. But I definitely root for them to try and try again when they fail. To OPs point, definitely tread lightly at first, and don't bet your whole company on Twitter's APIs. I'm excited to see where this goes.

egfx 9y ago

This! And I should know. My Twitter to Facebook client. http://2fb.me http://2fb.me was crippled by Twitter for trying to distribute tweets. The main purpose of Twitter and a Twitter api is distribution or so I thought. Facebook on the other hand has been a great friend. And the Facebook page gets a few new followers everyday even though the app has been reporpused. Facebook.com/toTwitter

ksk 9y ago

I agree with your sentiment, but it applies to a lot of popular companies, especially debt financed companies that don't charge their users. When they stick their hand in the VC cookie jar, the necrotic hand on the other side, grabs them and pulls them in.

saurik 9y ago

Twitter also did something that I find particularly interesting: they somehow convinced developers that you needed them to bless your app and provide APIs to build a client that accesses their service, even though those credentials must be distributed to the public with your client. To people like me who are old enough to have dealt with AOL, the idea that developers are willing to buy into this fiction is absolutely insane: if the official Twitter client can do it, then so can your client, and there is nothing Twitter can do to stop you that doesn't also break their client (which they are generally less willing to do than change their API on short notice!). As far as I can tell the only thing that enforces this is what should amount to an antitrust level of collusion between the mega-companies to restrict access to products (via services such as the Apple App Store) that do things that the other mega-companies dislike, as it is in all of their best interests to maintain this same fiction. The reality is that client-side API keys are totally meaningless and make no sense: in an attempt to believe they make sense some developers then start to believe other crazy things like "if I compile a token into my program other people can't read it as it is compiled" or to insist "there must be some way to encrypt my binary to make sure that other people can't get my API key", but this kind of broken thought only happens due to a broken premise :/. (That said, it isn't 100% clear to me that if someone released a true Twitter client Apple would remove it, so if someone disagrees with that premise I am all ears: that is simply the only theoretical mechanism I can see that would seem to enforce this, and I feel like I have heard of this happening before, but AFAIK the random apps in the App Store for abusing Tindr are all based on reverse engineering the true API for the service, but it is also possible that Apple cares less about helping Tindr or that Tindr has a different internal mentality and culture surrounding this kind of thing; or it could even be the case that these now have been removed and I haven't noticed yet as I don't really pay much attention to track them, or even that I am wrong and they are somehow more indirect in their implementation.)

hbbio 9y ago
Once I considered writing a Twitter client and the only reasonable option was to implement a proxy that would hold the API key... Hopefully I ended up not wasting time building this!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

chairmanwow 9y ago

I have heard rumblings about this from a few old salty dogs, but I never heard such a detailed explanation of what actually happened with Twitter + developers. While this API does seem exciting, I'm way more hesitant to create anything given the company's history.