5 ms·

Twitter Removes “via {client}” Attribution in #newTwitter. Buh-Bye Developers

40 points by cristinacordova 16y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
naz 16y ago
Less is more. Twitter is the embodiment of this ideology. 99% of normal people don't care about Twitter clients.
- jonknee 16y ago
  Aren't more people using a Twitter client than the website? Seems like that would mean a whole lot more than 1% of people care.
  - benologist 16y ago
    They probably care about using the clients, not advertising them.
  - smallblacksun 16y ago
    They don't care what client a person is using to send their tweets.
    - dillydally 16y ago
      OTOH, how are client developers supposed to get the word out? This will just encourage more aggressive tactics, like requiring people to tweet about the app to unlock certain features.
      - nitrogen 16y ago
        Actually, that sounds like a very interesting idea. Is this already used in practice, and does it end up being a problem? If it's already being done, are the features that are unlocked worth the forced spam?
  - bradleyjoyce 16y ago
    Twitter says 78% of users use Twitter.com http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html
    - jonknee 16y ago
      Sure, but that doesn't mean those 78% don't also use a client. I log into the site from my laptop but use a client on phone ans iPad.
  - abiczo 16y ago
    It's hard to tell since Twitter is not releasing any meaningful statistics about this. A couple of weeks ago they released a graph suggesting that 78% of all users use twitter.com (http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html) If you look carefully, they explain that this 78% is the percentage of people that have logged into twitter.com at least once in the last 30 days. Unfortunately this is not very useful since there are a multiple things that can only be done on twitter.com and not in 3rd party clients, either because the functionality is missing from the API or is broken (they started to fix some of these though). So even if people use a 3rd party client most of the time, they would still log into twitter.com every once in a while and thus will be counted as a twitter.com user. A more useful statistics would be the percentage of users who use any given client as their main way of interacting with Twitter. Of course twitter.com would still be the biggest client, but not with 78% of all users, more likely somewhere between 40-50% (based on stats by twittersource.info, tdash.org and stats of Hungarian users I've collected). As for the original post, we're running a web-based client and twitter.com is one of the most important referers so I'll have to agree that removing the "via client" attribution will hurt developers in a big way. (Yeah, I know, they are not removing it just making it a lot less prominent)
- jazzychad 16y ago
  That's a good excuse on paper, but I would give a lot of credit to the 3rd party developers for getting most of those 99% of normal people on Twitter in the first place. Writing Twitter apps and clients is a pretty competitive space (whether rational or not). Back in the olden days of Basic Auth, you would email one of the API devs at Twitter and get a special source token to put in your code for client attribution. Then, Twitter said you couldn't get a source token any more and had to use OAuth to specify your client source. This was one of the main carrots they dangled in front of developers to get them to switch to OAuth before the Basic Auth shut off; "Use OAuth so that your client source will show on the website." It would be one thing if it felt like a snub, but now it feels like a bait and switch. Disclosure: I've written several twitter apps and worked on the Twitter API team as a contractor for a bit last year.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    > but I would give a lot of credit to the 3rd party developers for getting most of those 99% of normal people on Twitter in the first place Do you think? I'd have expected most people came to twitter.com and after some time (and possibly frustration) learnt of other ways to access the main features (ie 3rd party apps).
  - travisjeffery 16y ago
    "...I would give a lot of credit to the 3rd party developers for getting most of those 99% of normal people on Twitter in the first place." No, you either don't spend enough time with these 'normal' people or you are simply too biased. As someone in University right now watching his 'normal' friends and colleagues join Twitter, and even just other 'normal' people in general -- very few to none use a Twitter client, they all use the Web. The one exception that I've seen some use are Blackberry people and ÜberTwitter. I think one reason geeks like us use clients is to have a constant flow and connection of updates coming from Twitter. 'Normal' people on the other hand use it in a more 'get-in-and-out' sense, they get on and post what they're doing, read what the last few things their friends wrote and then get back on to Facebook or whatever.
    - damncabbage 16y ago
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  And I'd wager that the ones that do mostly discover them via word of mouth.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
credo 16y ago
Knowing Twitter, I'm going to say that this is a bug. I'm assuming that removing the "via client" attribution was not intentional
seldo 16y ago
This is misleading. She says app attribution is "completely removed and hidden in the details section". If it's in the details section, it's hardly completely hidden, is it? It's quite prominently displayed in the details pane: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021847660/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021847660/ And even more so on the tweet's individual page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021848326/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021848326/ It's absolutely still there. It just moved a little bit. Non-story.
- cristinacordova 16y ago
  I meant completely removed from the main stream and hidden in the details section. Sorry for the confusion. It still removes attribution from how most users view tweets - from within the stream. How many users are likely to view the details for each tweet? Why is the attribution given less face time to the user? I would also disagree with the small type in the details section being "prominent"
  - seldo 16y ago
    I don't know about others, but I do so all the time. The application attribution was always of interest to a minority of users. I think it makes a lot of sense to move it to the details pane, to keep the stream simple and give greater prominence to, e.g., the favorite link, which is much bigger in the new layout.
  - catch23 16y ago
    when facebook changed user profile pages to be more stream-centric than app-centric, developers complained too, and subsequently destroyed the user base for a few apps that relied on user profile canvas presence. However, I think the change was for the better and the good apps that survived focused more on the user stream than a flashy annoying front page widget. I think anyone developing heavily for one platform should always keep in mind that you'll need to pivot as quickly as the platform company.
  - pierrefar 16y ago
    still removes attribution from how most users view tweets I thought most users view tweets not through the twitter stream on the web but using clients. The clients may or may not show the posting app's attribution, so I don't see this as a major shift of the status quo. Also the mobile web version doesn't have this attribution either: http://mobile.twitter.com/ http://mobile.twitter.com/
SilianRail 16y ago
Ok it's actually just moved a little bit, but more importantly... Why really should Twitter care? Do they have any obligation to developers? No. Correct me if I'm wrong but legally what's stopping Twitter from shutting off its API and creating its own client?
- cristinacordova 16y ago
  Twitter is already its own client. Twitter for iPad, iPhone and web are all produced by Twitter - in competition with Tweetdeck, Brizzly etc.
- someToast 16y ago
  Twitter.com uses their own API now. Shutting it off would be a bad idea. :)
catshirt 16y ago
even though (like many pointed out) it's only moved- not removed... what's important here is the sentiment, which is the same. if this was in fact removed intentionally, i can't help but think that this was a conscious decision to make twitter a much more central (at the peril of third parties) experience (much like the overall bigger picture of #newtwitter). that all said... they did add gist support which is so awesome. i can't take sides on this one.
jrockway 16y ago
I hate the attribution. I also like the old twitter web interface. When I'm not using the web interface, I use it through an irc proxy. No pictures, no attribution... nothing but content. (On my phone, I use Twidroid, but it's so buggy that all tweets attributed to Twidroid from me are usually, "it botched my priceless photo again". Not exactly the advertising they want, I bet...)
ugh 16y ago
I don’t think that the attribution is of interest to most users. It doesn’t strike me as something that is as important as name and time, the other two pieces of information displayed in the stream. Showing it among other less important information – namely on the details pane or individual page – seems sensible to me. I can understand how developers might not be happy about it but I think Twitter would be ill-advised to eschew sensible changes for the users because of what amounts to politics.
ja2ke 16y ago
It's not just the attributions leaving the main feed. Just a few months ago Twitter was going out of their way to promoting 3rd party clients (in the form of free advertising in the web client, in the space now occupied by Who To Follow). The last few months have seen almost all promotion for 3rd party clients disappear. Going from attributing every tweet in the main feed and promoting outside clients freely on the sidebar of everyone's account to shunting attributions into a secondary info pane, that's a very large shift.
lindvall 16y ago
For the people who are unhappy about the lack of "attribution", it seems almost as silly as complaining you can't see what web browser was used to submit a tweet via the website. While it may have been interesting to see, I think there is a perfectly reasonable argument to be made for simplifying an interface and removing as much noise as is possible (especially as they've added so much information/noise to the new interface).
lovskogen 16y ago
A second strike to Twitterific, whose name wasn't mentioned in the #newtitter newsletter, instead some clients less known were listed. Twitterific is Twitter for iPhone and iPads biggest competitor, so I see why, but it still is kinda evil.
jasonmar 16y ago
HN is always talking about metrics, scalability, and engineering, here's my take on this from that perspective: Imagine a twitter engineer working on the redesign was looking at data from the homepage, looking for something to remove. It turns out that the least clicked on thing on the entire page is the client attribution. He looks at eye-tracking data too, and it turns out the only people who look at the client names, are developers! The engineer opens his iPhone's calculator, and finds that by removing attribution he is reducing dynamic stream content by 33% (tweet, time, attribution) for 100M+ users. What kind of engineer is not going to jump on this? Especially for a piece nobody except developers is going to complain about losing? A cleaner, faster homepage is better for users. Sorry developers, the world does not revolve around you.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

naz 16y ago

Less is more. Twitter is the embodiment of this ideology. 99% of normal people don't care about Twitter clients.

jonknee 16y ago
Aren't more people using a Twitter client than the website? Seems like that would mean a whole lot more than 1% of people care.
- benologist 16y ago
  They probably care about using the clients, not advertising them.
- smallblacksun 16y ago
  They don't care what client a person is using to send their tweets.
  - dillydally 16y ago
    OTOH, how are client developers supposed to get the word out? This will just encourage more aggressive tactics, like requiring people to tweet about the app to unlock certain features.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      Actually, that sounds like a very interesting idea. Is this already used in practice, and does it end up being a problem? If it's already being done, are the features that are unlocked worth the forced spam?
- bradleyjoyce 16y ago
  Twitter says 78% of users use Twitter.com http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html
  - jonknee 16y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't mean those 78% don't also use a client. I log into the site from my laptop but use a client on phone ans iPad.
- abiczo 16y ago
  It's hard to tell since Twitter is not releasing any meaningful statistics about this. A couple of weeks ago they released a graph suggesting that 78% of all users use twitter.com (http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html) If you look carefully, they explain that this 78% is the percentage of people that have logged into twitter.com at least once in the last 30 days. Unfortunately this is not very useful since there are a multiple things that can only be done on twitter.com and not in 3rd party clients, either because the functionality is missing from the API or is broken (they started to fix some of these though). So even if people use a 3rd party client most of the time, they would still log into twitter.com every once in a while and thus will be counted as a twitter.com user. A more useful statistics would be the percentage of users who use any given client as their main way of interacting with Twitter. Of course twitter.com would still be the biggest client, but not with 78% of all users, more likely somewhere between 40-50% (based on stats by twittersource.info, tdash.org and stats of Hungarian users I've collected). As for the original post, we're running a web-based client and twitter.com is one of the most important referers so I'll have to agree that removing the "via client" attribution will hurt developers in a big way. (Yeah, I know, they are not removing it just making it a lot less prominent)
jazzychad 16y ago
That's a good excuse on paper, but I would give a lot of credit to the 3rd party developers for getting most of those 99% of normal people on Twitter in the first place. Writing Twitter apps and clients is a pretty competitive space (whether rational or not). Back in the olden days of Basic Auth, you would email one of the API devs at Twitter and get a special source token to put in your code for client attribution. Then, Twitter said you couldn't get a source token any more and had to use OAuth to specify your client source. This was one of the main carrots they dangled in front of developers to get them to switch to OAuth before the Basic Auth shut off; "Use OAuth so that your client source will show on the website." It would be one thing if it felt like a snub, but now it feels like a bait and switch. Disclosure: I've written several twitter apps and worked on the Twitter API team as a contractor for a bit last year.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  > but I would give a lot of credit to the 3rd party developers for getting most of those 99% of normal people on Twitter in the first place Do you think? I'd have expected most people came to twitter.com and after some time (and possibly frustration) learnt of other ways to access the main features (ie 3rd party apps).
- travisjeffery 16y ago
  "...I would give a lot of credit to the 3rd party developers for getting most of those 99% of normal people on Twitter in the first place." No, you either don't spend enough time with these 'normal' people or you are simply too biased. As someone in University right now watching his 'normal' friends and colleagues join Twitter, and even just other 'normal' people in general -- very few to none use a Twitter client, they all use the Web. The one exception that I've seen some use are Blackberry people and ÜberTwitter. I think one reason geeks like us use clients is to have a constant flow and connection of updates coming from Twitter. 'Normal' people on the other hand use it in a more 'get-in-and-out' sense, they get on and post what they're doing, read what the last few things their friends wrote and then get back on to Facebook or whatever.
  - damncabbage 16y ago
pavel_lishin 16y ago
And I'd wager that the ones that do mostly discover them via word of mouth.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

credo 16y ago

Knowing Twitter, I'm going to say that this is a bug. I'm assuming that removing the "via client" attribution was not intentional

seldo 16y ago

This is misleading. She says app attribution is "completely removed and hidden in the details section". If it's in the details section, it's hardly completely hidden, is it? It's quite prominently displayed in the details pane: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021847660/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021847660/ And even more so on the tweet's individual page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021848326/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021848326/ It's absolutely still there. It just moved a little bit. Non-story.

cristinacordova 16y ago
I meant completely removed from the main stream and hidden in the details section. Sorry for the confusion. It still removes attribution from how most users view tweets - from within the stream. How many users are likely to view the details for each tweet? Why is the attribution given less face time to the user? I would also disagree with the small type in the details section being "prominent"
- seldo 16y ago
  I don't know about others, but I do so all the time. The application attribution was always of interest to a minority of users. I think it makes a lot of sense to move it to the details pane, to keep the stream simple and give greater prominence to, e.g., the favorite link, which is much bigger in the new layout.
- catch23 16y ago
  when facebook changed user profile pages to be more stream-centric than app-centric, developers complained too, and subsequently destroyed the user base for a few apps that relied on user profile canvas presence. However, I think the change was for the better and the good apps that survived focused more on the user stream than a flashy annoying front page widget. I think anyone developing heavily for one platform should always keep in mind that you'll need to pivot as quickly as the platform company.
- pierrefar 16y ago
  still removes attribution from how most users view tweets I thought most users view tweets not through the twitter stream on the web but using clients. The clients may or may not show the posting app's attribution, so I don't see this as a major shift of the status quo. Also the mobile web version doesn't have this attribution either: http://mobile.twitter.com/ http://mobile.twitter.com/

SilianRail 16y ago

Ok it's actually just moved a little bit, but more importantly... Why really should Twitter care? Do they have any obligation to developers? No. Correct me if I'm wrong but legally what's stopping Twitter from shutting off its API and creating its own client?

cristinacordova 16y ago
Twitter is already its own client. Twitter for iPad, iPhone and web are all produced by Twitter - in competition with Tweetdeck, Brizzly etc.
someToast 16y ago
Twitter.com uses their own API now. Shutting it off would be a bad idea. :)

catshirt 16y ago

even though (like many pointed out) it's only moved- not removed... what's important here is the sentiment, which is the same. if this was in fact removed intentionally, i can't help but think that this was a conscious decision to make twitter a much more central (at the peril of third parties) experience (much like the overall bigger picture of #newtwitter). that all said... they did add gist support which is so awesome. i can't take sides on this one.

jrockway 16y ago

I hate the attribution. I also like the old twitter web interface. When I'm not using the web interface, I use it through an irc proxy. No pictures, no attribution... nothing but content. (On my phone, I use Twidroid, but it's so buggy that all tweets attributed to Twidroid from me are usually, "it botched my priceless photo again". Not exactly the advertising they want, I bet...)

ugh 16y ago

I don’t think that the attribution is of interest to most users. It doesn’t strike me as something that is as important as name and time, the other two pieces of information displayed in the stream. Showing it among other less important information – namely on the details pane or individual page – seems sensible to me. I can understand how developers might not be happy about it but I think Twitter would be ill-advised to eschew sensible changes for the users because of what amounts to politics.

ja2ke 16y ago

It's not just the attributions leaving the main feed. Just a few months ago Twitter was going out of their way to promoting 3rd party clients (in the form of free advertising in the web client, in the space now occupied by Who To Follow). The last few months have seen almost all promotion for 3rd party clients disappear. Going from attributing every tweet in the main feed and promoting outside clients freely on the sidebar of everyone's account to shunting attributions into a secondary info pane, that's a very large shift.

lindvall 16y ago

For the people who are unhappy about the lack of "attribution", it seems almost as silly as complaining you can't see what web browser was used to submit a tweet via the website. While it may have been interesting to see, I think there is a perfectly reasonable argument to be made for simplifying an interface and removing as much noise as is possible (especially as they've added so much information/noise to the new interface).

lovskogen 16y ago

A second strike to Twitterific, whose name wasn't mentioned in the #newtitter newsletter, instead some clients less known were listed. Twitterific is Twitter for iPhone and iPads biggest competitor, so I see why, but it still is kinda evil.

jasonmar 16y ago

HN is always talking about metrics, scalability, and engineering, here's my take on this from that perspective: Imagine a twitter engineer working on the redesign was looking at data from the homepage, looking for something to remove. It turns out that the least clicked on thing on the entire page is the client attribution. He looks at eye-tracking data too, and it turns out the only people who look at the client names, are developers! The engineer opens his iPhone's calculator, and finds that by removing attribution he is reducing dynamic stream content by 33% (tweet, time, attribution) for 100M+ users. What kind of engineer is not going to jump on this? Especially for a piece nobody except developers is going to complain about losing? A cleaner, faster homepage is better for users. Sorry developers, the world does not revolve around you.