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Third party apps decide how content is displayed, regardless of what comes out of the Twitter API. That's the problem for Twitter, from a business point of view
by cbeach 4y ago
Third party apps decide how content is displayed, regardless of what comes out of the Twitter API. That's the problem for Twitter, from a business point of view.
- wpietri 4y agoIs that much of a problem? Twitter's ad units aren't arbitrary. They sell things that look very much like tweets. It seems like it would be pretty easy for Twitter to insist that things get rendered the way they want or else. They could even provide library code for popular platforms to do that, as they have that already written.
- cbeach 4y agoI've seen ads on Twitter that render in a more sophisticated way than tweets. For example, they include buttons. Third party apps could implement this kind of thing, for sure. However, on an ongoing basis, Twitter would need to ensure that all third party apps had the latest ad presentation logic, and that they worked correctly, and none of the third party apps used sneaky tricks to hide the ads. After all, there's no benefit to the developers of the third-party app in hosting ads that benefit Twitter. It would quite costly and fiddly for Twitter to administrate this, and IMO, the benefits of a third-party app ecosystem don't really stack up from Twitter's PoV.