6 ms·

Twitter's Abuse Of Its Outside Developers Is Its Downfall

64 points by mikecane 15y ago

code_duck 15y ago
It's certainly reduced my goodwill towards the company and platform, both as a developer and a consumer. I won't use the Twitter API. Same goes for Etsy - if you check out the mailing list, as small as it is there's some serious discontent there. No coincidence some of the same people are involved in those two companies. Twitter, Fred Wilson et al. appear to have made a calculation that keeping developers on their good side was not as important as their other plans. I don't think a wealth of Google+ apps is going to make or break the service, but it doesn't hurt. I'd certainly consider writing apps based on G+. I can picture the API being a lot more stable and professionally managed than Facebook's API, too.
cletus 15y ago
I don't buy this at all. In fact, I don't buy the conventional wisdom that developers are what makes and breaks a platform. Developers do what Deep Throat suggests: they follow the money. People often complain about the unpredictability and capriciousness of Apple's App Store policies yet it's still where developers flock to. Why? Because they make money. Those same policies arguably hurt developers but they definitely help the consumer, which ultimately does help the developer. Tae that as an example of developers not knowing what's good for them. You see the same thing particularly in tech journalism: people often say the problem with, for example, Windows Phone 7 or WebOS is a lack of developers. No. The problem is a lack of users (and thus money to be made). Developers follow the money. In the case of Twitter, I think it's downfall is that it is simply a very marginal product and has missed its opportunity to change that. Its usage is a lot lower than the number of accounts suggests [1]. I believe it was envisioned as a way of people sharing status updates in a more public fashion than Facebook. The reality of Twitter (IMHO) is that it's a way of following celebrities. Twitter clients were doomed before they started, doomed to commoditization then cannibilzation that is. It was naive to go into building on someone else's platform any other way (yet many did seem to believe that Twitter was somehow "different"). I don't believe the existence of these apps is the reason for Twitter's success either. My personal opinion is that people decide to use Twitter and then look for an app to do it. Twitter lives and dies by the success of... Twitter. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-how-many-users-does-twitter-really-have-2011-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-how-many-use...
- sedev 15y ago
  I'd modify that a little, basically riffing on Marco Arment's proposal[1]: developers will do great things for a platform if we use it, if it's in popular use, and if there's money to be made. Twitter the service, I would say, has been fluttering between one and three of those things - the problem is that Twitter the company has been trying to choke out the "money to be made" criteria, and that, as you observe, drives developers away. [1]: http://www.marco.org/2010/11/04/developers-dont-rush-to-new-platforms http://www.marco.org/2010/11/04/developers-dont-rush-to-new-...
- swombat 15y ago
  I agree. I'd argue that twitter's success made the developers, not the other way around. Certainly, the departure of developers is not going to unmake Twitter, not least because they have the resources to build their own clients now. If I were a TweetDeck user and TweetDeck vanished, I wouldn't stop using twitter, I'd just switch to a new client (as I have many times)...
  - trustfundbaby 15y ago
    ... built by a developer right?
  - code_duck 15y ago
    Switch to a new client, as you have many times... but the developers don't matter? Try having one official mobile client and a web client. And if you don't like either one, you're out of luck - and then the service is out of luck when you stop using it in favor of one with better software. The relationship between developers and service providers is ideally symbiotic.
  - AlexC04 15y ago
    Exactly - twitter is doing just fine. The article reeks of sour grapes.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  "No. The problem is a lack of users (and thus money to be made). Developers follow the money." Developers follow the money, and customers follow the developed products. It's a cycle. You can't just say 1 is the whole driving force when in reality, both are, and they drive each other as well.
jgroome 15y ago
So Google may release G+ APIs, and every developer is going to drop Twitter for G+? Come on. Even if they did, who's to say Google won't pull the exact same stunt and leave developers in the cold? Come to think of it, don't you think the importance of external developers in the Twitter ecosphere is ever so slightly overstated?
- ohashi 15y ago
  If I were a gambling man, and I am, I'd bet on Google being better to their devs than Twitter. Why? Past performance. They are a much larger community that has a LOT of goodwill in the developer community. Considering 90+% of their income is still ads, why would they throw that down the drain for something that barely affects their bottom line?
  - niklasl 15y ago
    I have to quibble with Google having a lot of goodwill to burn. They withdrew any kind of usable search API a long time ago, considering Google's preeminence in search that is rather insular and not helpful for finding novel ways to build on search. They provided a translation API only to decide that it was too popular and pulling the rug out from under a lot of people who has built stuff on it.
    - Pewpewarrows 15y ago
      The translation API was marked as deprecated and will be phased out (along with them providing alternative APIs for you to transition to) because of abuse. Making-up facts only weakens your argument.
    - msie 15y ago
      A million upvotes for this. They'll punish people for trying to use their search results yet they scrape other websites and reformat their content for display in those search results! Bing and Yahoo have search APIs whereas they don't have them anymore. So goodwill is not guaranteed.
- 15y ago
jccodez 15y ago
It will be interesting to see what developers create from the g+ apis. I will be taking a look at integrating when they are released.
StrawberryFrog 15y ago
"The same thing could happen with Google+. An app could come along that would bring sense to its UI/UX" I'm not sure what this means. Google+ launched with an Android app that, to me anyway, has strong functionality, carries the same design as the website, and like the website, makes sense. Is the author saying that: 1) They don't like the Google+ UI/UX and want a different design that would in their opinion "bring sense to it". This would be a small minority opinion, judging by the favourable reviews. 2) They pay no attention to android apps, and so haven't seen this app. Is it on iPhone?
gsiener 15y ago
Upvoted because finally someone used the possessive its properly.
nir 15y ago
For a long time Twitter apps were developed simply to enjoy the Twitter hype rather than any financial gain. For some reason Mainstream media adopted Twitter as the invention of the century, so developing a unique Twitter app was a way to get linked to from some gushing NYT article. Now that Twitter is less of a novelty, and the chances of making any money off it are not impressive, it's not such an attractive prospect, regardless of Twitter's own actions.

64 points by mikecane 15y ago

It's certainly reduced my goodwill towards the company and platform, both as a developer and a consumer. I won't use the Twitter API. Same goes for Etsy - if you check out the mailing list, as small as it is there's some serious discontent there. No coincidence some of the same people are involved in those two companies. Twitter, Fred Wilson et al. appear to have made a calculation that keeping developers on their good side was not as important as their other plans. I don't think a wealth of Google+ apps is going to make or break the service, but it doesn't hurt. I'd certainly consider writing apps based on G+. I can picture the API being a lot more stable and professionally managed than Facebook's API, too.

cletus 15y ago

I don't buy this at all. In fact, I don't buy the conventional wisdom that developers are what makes and breaks a platform. Developers do what Deep Throat suggests: they follow the money. People often complain about the unpredictability and capriciousness of Apple's App Store policies yet it's still where developers flock to. Why? Because they make money. Those same policies arguably hurt developers but they definitely help the consumer, which ultimately does help the developer. Tae that as an example of developers not knowing what's good for them. You see the same thing particularly in tech journalism: people often say the problem with, for example, Windows Phone 7 or WebOS is a lack of developers. No. The problem is a lack of users (and thus money to be made). Developers follow the money. In the case of Twitter, I think it's downfall is that it is simply a very marginal product and has missed its opportunity to change that. Its usage is a lot lower than the number of accounts suggests [1]. I believe it was envisioned as a way of people sharing status updates in a more public fashion than Facebook. The reality of Twitter (IMHO) is that it's a way of following celebrities. Twitter clients were doomed before they started, doomed to commoditization then cannibilzation that is. It was naive to go into building on someone else's platform any other way (yet many did seem to believe that Twitter was somehow "different"). I don't believe the existence of these apps is the reason for Twitter's success either. My personal opinion is that people decide to use Twitter and then look for an app to do it. Twitter lives and dies by the success of... Twitter. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-how-many-users-does-twitter-really-have-2011-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-how-many-use...

sedev 15y ago
I'd modify that a little, basically riffing on Marco Arment's proposal[1]: developers will do great things for a platform if we use it, if it's in popular use, and if there's money to be made. Twitter the service, I would say, has been fluttering between one and three of those things - the problem is that Twitter the company has been trying to choke out the "money to be made" criteria, and that, as you observe, drives developers away. [1]: http://www.marco.org/2010/11/04/developers-dont-rush-to-new-platforms http://www.marco.org/2010/11/04/developers-dont-rush-to-new-...
swombat 15y ago
I agree. I'd argue that twitter's success made the developers, not the other way around. Certainly, the departure of developers is not going to unmake Twitter, not least because they have the resources to build their own clients now. If I were a TweetDeck user and TweetDeck vanished, I wouldn't stop using twitter, I'd just switch to a new client (as I have many times)...
- trustfundbaby 15y ago
  ... built by a developer right?
- code_duck 15y ago
  Switch to a new client, as you have many times... but the developers don't matter? Try having one official mobile client and a web client. And if you don't like either one, you're out of luck - and then the service is out of luck when you stop using it in favor of one with better software. The relationship between developers and service providers is ideally symbiotic.
- AlexC04 15y ago
  Exactly - twitter is doing just fine. The article reeks of sour grapes.
wccrawford 15y ago
"No. The problem is a lack of users (and thus money to be made). Developers follow the money." Developers follow the money, and customers follow the developed products. It's a cycle. You can't just say 1 is the whole driving force when in reality, both are, and they drive each other as well.

jgroome 15y ago

So Google may release G+ APIs, and every developer is going to drop Twitter for G+? Come on. Even if they did, who's to say Google won't pull the exact same stunt and leave developers in the cold? Come to think of it, don't you think the importance of external developers in the Twitter ecosphere is ever so slightly overstated?

ohashi 15y ago
If I were a gambling man, and I am, I'd bet on Google being better to their devs than Twitter. Why? Past performance. They are a much larger community that has a LOT of goodwill in the developer community. Considering 90+% of their income is still ads, why would they throw that down the drain for something that barely affects their bottom line?
- niklasl 15y ago
  I have to quibble with Google having a lot of goodwill to burn. They withdrew any kind of usable search API a long time ago, considering Google's preeminence in search that is rather insular and not helpful for finding novel ways to build on search. They provided a translation API only to decide that it was too popular and pulling the rug out from under a lot of people who has built stuff on it.
  - Pewpewarrows 15y ago
    The translation API was marked as deprecated and will be phased out (along with them providing alternative APIs for you to transition to) because of abuse. Making-up facts only weakens your argument.
  - msie 15y ago
    A million upvotes for this. They'll punish people for trying to use their search results yet they scrape other websites and reformat their content for display in those search results! Bing and Yahoo have search APIs whereas they don't have them anymore. So goodwill is not guaranteed.
15y ago

jccodez 15y ago

It will be interesting to see what developers create from the g+ apis. I will be taking a look at integrating when they are released.

StrawberryFrog 15y ago

"The same thing could happen with Google+. An app could come along that would bring sense to its UI/UX" I'm not sure what this means. Google+ launched with an Android app that, to me anyway, has strong functionality, carries the same design as the website, and like the website, makes sense. Is the author saying that: 1) They don't like the Google+ UI/UX and want a different design that would in their opinion "bring sense to it". This would be a small minority opinion, judging by the favourable reviews. 2) They pay no attention to android apps, and so haven't seen this app. Is it on iPhone?

gsiener 15y ago

Upvoted because finally someone used the possessive its properly.

nir 15y ago

For a long time Twitter apps were developed simply to enjoy the Twitter hype rather than any financial gain. For some reason Mainstream media adopted Twitter as the invention of the century, so developing a unique Twitter app was a way to get linked to from some gushing NYT article. Now that Twitter is less of a novelty, and the chances of making any money off it are not impressive, it's not such an attractive prospect, regardless of Twitter's own actions.