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I can't switch to Mastodon right now because most of my network is on Twitter. Why hasn't somebody built an instance that lets me interact with both networks at

by evv 9y ago

I can't switch to Mastodon right now because most of my network is on Twitter. Why hasn't somebody built an instance that lets me interact with both networks at once?

coolsunglasses 9y ago
Twitter's API is aggressively limited, so limited that third party clients barely work. Believe me, I've tried.
egypturnash 9y ago
There's external tools[1] that will clone your toots to Twitter. Nothing integrated, though, and Gargron has said he'd rather keep it that way. [2] Nothing's stopping you from making your own fork and fooling around with it though. Well aside from "not wanting it badly enough to spin up a local Mastodon instance and spend some chunk of the precious few hours remaining of your life on it". 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+github+twitter https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+github+twitter will find you a bunch 2: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/3888#issuecomment-314936518 https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/3888#issuecomme...
mxuribe 9y ago
Its less a technical issue, and more of a business/political thing. Its twitter's silo, so if they wish to block or severely limit outside systems from integrating with it, twitter will do so. Twitter can pick up their ball, kill the game, head home, and leave everyone without a game to play; philosophically speaking of course. That's the downside of such a centralized platform. So, i would guess - just my guess really - that it would explain why some rock star devs don't hurry and develop such an integration platform. Think about it: what if some devs build some awesome integration tool/platform, and then twitter sees all the outbound traffic (read: affecting their potential revenue)...well, twitter would just kill that access. And all the devs would get frustrated, etc. I would further guess that these devs probably thought, screw that, i'll just leave twitter for good, and simply post on mastodon (or some such/similar open platform), and just help build out this open platform.
s73ver_ 9y ago
I think it's because, if Twitter users can interact with Mastadon users, there's little incentive for them to leave Twitter. It's like when you could run Windows programs on OS/2. There was little incentive for developers to create native OS/2 programs, and then little incentive for people to run OS/2.

by evv 9y ago

I can't switch to Mastodon right now because most of my network is on Twitter. Why hasn't somebody built an instance that lets me interact with both networks at once?

coolsunglasses 9y ago

Twitter's API is aggressively limited, so limited that third party clients barely work. Believe me, I've tried.

egypturnash 9y ago

There's external tools[1] that will clone your toots to Twitter. Nothing integrated, though, and Gargron has said he'd rather keep it that way. [2] Nothing's stopping you from making your own fork and fooling around with it though. Well aside from "not wanting it badly enough to spin up a local Mastodon instance and spend some chunk of the precious few hours remaining of your life on it". 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+github+twitter https://www.google.com/search?q=mastodon+github+twitter will find you a bunch 2: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/3888#issuecomment-314936518 https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/3888#issuecomme...

mxuribe 9y ago

Its less a technical issue, and more of a business/political thing. Its twitter's silo, so if they wish to block or severely limit outside systems from integrating with it, twitter will do so. Twitter can pick up their ball, kill the game, head home, and leave everyone without a game to play; philosophically speaking of course. That's the downside of such a centralized platform. So, i would guess - just my guess really - that it would explain why some rock star devs don't hurry and develop such an integration platform. Think about it: what if some devs build some awesome integration tool/platform, and then twitter sees all the outbound traffic (read: affecting their potential revenue)...well, twitter would just kill that access. And all the devs would get frustrated, etc. I would further guess that these devs probably thought, screw that, i'll just leave twitter for good, and simply post on mastodon (or some such/similar open platform), and just help build out this open platform.

s73ver_ 9y ago

I think it's because, if Twitter users can interact with Mastadon users, there's little incentive for them to leave Twitter. It's like when you could run Windows programs on OS/2. There was little incentive for developers to create native OS/2 programs, and then little incentive for people to run OS/2.