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Here’s Why Developers Are Scaring Twitter

22 points by bjonathan 16y ago

zacharycohn 16y ago
The last line of the article was good: "If [Twitter] really had 90 percent of all tweet traffic, it wouldn’t need to lay down the law. The market would have spoken already." This is along the lines of what I was wondering about when they made their announcement: Why are they so concerned about 10% of users?
rokhayakebe 16y ago
Let us put ourselves in a Twitter executive shoes for a second. Here we are worried about monetization because, well, it is not an issue we can keep deferring. Now while we are wrestling with trials and errors, we see other companies like Adly racking in $50,000 from one tweet. What do you do? You shut down all the opportunities for new comers to milk your cow when all it is doing for you is eat and poop.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  To extend your metaphor, yes, the Twitter executives probably feel like that. However, it is not the fault of the third party developers that Twitter can't be arsed even to get it's own bucket and take a turn milking the cow. Moreover, in that metaphor, a lot of the third party devs have been bringing grass and other tasty treats for the cow, looking after it better than the Twitter execs, who would have been happy just to let the cow wander around uncared for until it fell in a ditch somewhere. At the end of the day, yes, it is their cow, but they are acting extremely ungratefully to the people who helped them build and popularise their platform.
rick888 16y ago
This is why I will never base my entire business on twitter. I wrote a stats app 2 years ago, but I never released it. There's nothing stopping Twitter from using you as a test while you build your business up and then directly compete with you by adding in any features that they know are popular. I suppose it might work for a short-term pay day, but I would be trying to diversify asap if I were any of the current businesses based on it.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  If you put the effort in, you should have released it. Because hey, money.
  - rick888 16y ago
    You're right. I have a history of personal projects that I've started and never finished. I think the problem is that since I had a day job during that time, it was easy for me to lose focus. I've since quit my day job and I've been working full-time on my new projects (not related to twitter, but I did gain some good experience and reusable libraries with that project). It's one of the problem you face if you have a startup and a day job. At least when I would get home from my job, it was very difficult to switch gears to my own projects..and my code ended up unfocused and scattered.
- Dylanlacey 16y ago
  But this is a business truism, really. Never EVER build a business based on another who is in a power to revoke it, unless you can make a TON of money in a short amount of time.
rudiger 16y ago
I'd be more interested to see "Here's Why Developers Are Scaling Twitter".

22 points by bjonathan 16y ago

The last line of the article was good: "If [Twitter] really had 90 percent of all tweet traffic, it wouldn’t need to lay down the law. The market would have spoken already." This is along the lines of what I was wondering about when they made their announcement: Why are they so concerned about 10% of users?

rokhayakebe 16y ago

Let us put ourselves in a Twitter executive shoes for a second. Here we are worried about monetization because, well, it is not an issue we can keep deferring. Now while we are wrestling with trials and errors, we see other companies like Adly racking in $50,000 from one tweet. What do you do? You shut down all the opportunities for new comers to milk your cow when all it is doing for you is eat and poop.

Stormbringer 16y ago
To extend your metaphor, yes, the Twitter executives probably feel like that. However, it is not the fault of the third party developers that Twitter can't be arsed even to get it's own bucket and take a turn milking the cow. Moreover, in that metaphor, a lot of the third party devs have been bringing grass and other tasty treats for the cow, looking after it better than the Twitter execs, who would have been happy just to let the cow wander around uncared for until it fell in a ditch somewhere. At the end of the day, yes, it is their cow, but they are acting extremely ungratefully to the people who helped them build and popularise their platform.

rick888 16y ago

This is why I will never base my entire business on twitter. I wrote a stats app 2 years ago, but I never released it. There's nothing stopping Twitter from using you as a test while you build your business up and then directly compete with you by adding in any features that they know are popular. I suppose it might work for a short-term pay day, but I would be trying to diversify asap if I were any of the current businesses based on it.

Stormbringer 16y ago
If you put the effort in, you should have released it. Because hey, money.
- rick888 16y ago
  You're right. I have a history of personal projects that I've started and never finished. I think the problem is that since I had a day job during that time, it was easy for me to lose focus. I've since quit my day job and I've been working full-time on my new projects (not related to twitter, but I did gain some good experience and reusable libraries with that project). It's one of the problem you face if you have a startup and a day job. At least when I would get home from my job, it was very difficult to switch gears to my own projects..and my code ended up unfocused and scattered.
Dylanlacey 16y ago
But this is a business truism, really. Never EVER build a business based on another who is in a power to revoke it, unless you can make a TON of money in a short amount of time.

rudiger 16y ago

I'd be more interested to see "Here's Why Developers Are Scaling Twitter".