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Basic truth: New technology is driven by early adopters, who then influence their less tech-savvy pals. Happened with Google, happened with the iPhone, and it h

Basic truth: New technology is driven by early adopters, who then influence their less tech-savvy pals. Happened with Google, happened with the iPhone, and it happened with Twitter. So now that the obvious is out of the way – we'll look back one day and see this as the day Twitter fucked the dog. They've made a decision that motivates the very core of early adopters who embraced Twitter to move on. Yeah, they have to make money. They've convinced themselves the experience must be entirely under their control to do it. Okay. And maybe that's so. And maybe they'll squeeze some pennies out for awhile. In the meantime, there's a group of folks who first jumped into Twitter during the days where you weren't chained to their mediocre user products. They'll start the move to a better network. And one day, everyone will look around and see all that's left on Twitter is the glitter gif morons and big brands with more money than sense, just as happened with MySpace.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
> They've made a decision that motivates the very core of early adopters who embraced Twitter to move on. What decision specifically are you talking about?
- danilocampos 14y ago
  Limiting the growth and development of third party applications.
pkulak 14y ago
MySpace didn't die because they pissed off the early adopter geeks. They pissed off everyone. And everyone left. If Twitter just becomes the place where hundreds of millions of people follow hundreds of celebrities while also looking at ads, I think they're okay with that.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  I don't think Myspace pissed anyone off, it was more that their product didn't make any sense. In my experience people didn't leave Myspace for Facebook because they "hated Myspace", they left because Facebook was a better product that met their needs. I don't think Twitter should be concerned unless someone builds a better product.
  - danilocampos 14y ago
    > I don't think Twitter should be concerned unless someone builds a better product. Which is inevitable. Their clients are crappy, otherwise there wouldn't be a third-party ecosystem to piss off in the first place. Which means their only defense is network effects. Which means it's probably a bad idea to motivate all your early adopters to find and grow the network that unseats you.
    - citricsquid 14y ago
      I think you're really underestimating the value that "normal people" provide to Twitter, I would bet that the majority of Twitter users (that are active) are not "early adopters", but "normal people" that follow celebrities and talk to their friends. I left high school a few years back and the majority of my Facebook friends are ~19-20, almost all of them use Twitter and not a single one could write a line of code in any programming language, nor could they give a damn about whether or not Twitter is open to developers. Take a look at the Twitter trends list if you want proof that Twitter caters more to "normal people" than it does "technology" people, here's the #1 trend as I type this: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23NameATurnOn http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23NameATurnOn Yes, their only defense is their network (which is, in my opinion, their "product"), but the majority of their network is not going to leave because of their developer relations. Twitter are safe as long as an alternative doesn't exist and they provide value to their users. Twitter aren't stupid, they're not going to be enacting this plan if the majority of their users use third party clients. I suspect the majority of people that do use third party clients are those using "value adding" third party clients, like Hootsuite, and those that use Hootsuite are the people that get value from Twitter's network (for example marketing people) so if Hootsuite shuts down they're not going to quit Twitter, they're going to move to an official client.
      - MBCook 14y ago
        Myspace was full of normal people too, not just hardcore early adopters. AOL was full of normal people, only geeks wanted real TCP/IP to surf and play games. If your client annoys people too much, they'll move on too. Nullsoft learned that the hard way with Winamp 3. Gnome may be in the middle of that lesson right now.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  Entirely so – they died from a stagnant product and a hideous experience. But whether MySpace died from Twitter's flavor of incompetence or not is irrelevant to the point that the end result is going to look comically similar.
Permit 14y ago
If I use Twitter, it's not because of third party products. While I could see a decision like this severely impacting Facebook, whose applications I do use from time to time, I don't know that it will hurt Twitter. Are there any ground breaking Twitter applications that are keeping users around? If not, why would they need to make themselves a platform?
- Firehed 14y ago
  I see myself using Twitter a lot less if I had to use their mobile app, rather than a third-party one that doesn't suck (I use TweetBot exclusively). Conversely, I use no third-party Facebook applications, unless you count FB Connect as a more than a SSO mechanism (i.e., I'm not actually using FB or its network benefits on any site/app using FBC).
continuations 14y ago
The vast majority of Twitter users don't use Twitter because they like the 3rd party apps. They use Twitter because they could get constant updates from Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. 3rd party apps means nothing to them as long as Bieber and Gaga are still on Twitter.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Facebook could subvert that in an instant. Literally tomorrow, if they wanted to do so.
  - continuations 14y ago
    Facebook has been trying to so for ages with their "subscribe" button.
    - nmcfarl 14y ago
      If that’s considered "wanting to subvert Twitter", it’s not twitter who’s in trouble. But I suspect (and hope) that’s not Facebook’s end game with subscribe.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  > 3rd party apps means nothing to them as long as Bieber and Gaga are still on Twitter. Truth. > They use Twitter because they could get constant updates from Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Also true. > The vast majority of Twitter users don't use Twitter because they like the 3rd party apps. True again. And entirely missing the point. New technologies are driven by early adopters. And Twitter is in the very unique position of having flipped a lever that alienates that precise population all at once. So they'll move on to the next big thing, build up the network, and eventually Bieber will move over because it's actually not hard to build a better product than Twitter. Their only insurance is network effects, and they've undermined that advantage by delivering the most perfect gift basket packed with early adopters to Dalton Caldwell.
  - 14y ago
Steko 14y ago
Matt Yglesias had an interesting idea [1] when he pointed out that instead of being obsessed with selling display ads in tweet streams they should have monetized the tweet streams themselves. I wonder if it alienating Gaga/Bieber would turn out any better for them then alienating developers though. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/25/twitter_shouldn_t_become_an_advertising_platform_it_already_is_one.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/25/twitter_shoul... [1] ... Twitter seems to clearly intend to move in the direction of becoming an advertising business. It seems like a mistake to me, if only because as it currently exists my twitter feed is already full of what amount to ads. A lot of the culprits are people just like me—journalists touting our latest articles. Then you have various other media personalities, celebrities, and authors investing in their personal brand. You have food trucks telling you about their location and local restaurants touting specials and deals. Every big company has one or more corporate twitter accounts these days for PR and marketing purposes. Rather than selling lots of ads on Twitter, Twitter could sell itself as a service to the large number of people and firms who are already organically using it as an advertising tool. Which is just to say that the Twitter user base seems ideal for a tiered pricing model. Most people on Twitter don't tweet that much, don't have very many followers, and don't particularly aspire to having a large number of followers. Then you have a relatively small minority of heavy users who are deliberately courting a mass Twitter audience. Just charge us! Let everyone with fewer than 500 followers use it for free, and then have a few tiers of pricing for people with large followings. Most people probably have no desire to pay for Twitter, but anyone who's bothered to amass 20,000 is obviously getting a lot of value from access to the Twitter audience and would pay for it. Meanwhile the broad mass of non-professional users could keep using a great no-charge ad-free service that creates the ecosystem pro users want to pay to gain access to.
- ssclafani 14y ago
  People who say that Twitter should just charge pro users don't get what Twitter is trying to achieve. Twitter doesn't want to be a million-dollar business, they want to be a billion-dollar business. They wont get there by charging users. Not even close.
  - deleted 14y ago
ggggit 14y ago
I would tend to agree with your initial statement. Which is why I believe what nerds are ranting about on HN does make a difference. I would guess that other users will never find out about certain stuff unless the serious nerds let them- they are the "trend makers" so to speak. Whether popularity equals instant and lasting profit is another question. But no one can deny Twitter has become very popular. It's valuable because it's useful, even if it's not a winner in terms of profitability. (Much like Wikipedia.) Contrast this with the enormous number of developers who are focused on some mythical end user they can speculate about and that they know they can easily manipulate. Or with folks who are using PR and the tech media to fool investors and generate short-lived buzz amongst less savvy users. Internet VC guilty as charged. These guys are usually rational and know the scent of money a little better. But they cannot control what becomes popular, not like a mob of irrational, fussy nerds can. Free stuff frustrates a lot of developers. But do not forget the internet is in its infancy. We're still trying to get stuff working. That Twitter even works (the SMS part) is a blessing. Will App.net be able to make agreements with all the telcos as Twitter did? We shall see.

pavel_lishin 14y ago

> They've made a decision that motivates the very core of early adopters who embraced Twitter to move on. What decision specifically are you talking about?

danilocampos 14y ago
Limiting the growth and development of third party applications.

pkulak 14y ago

MySpace didn't die because they pissed off the early adopter geeks. They pissed off everyone. And everyone left. If Twitter just becomes the place where hundreds of millions of people follow hundreds of celebrities while also looking at ads, I think they're okay with that.

citricsquid 14y ago
I don't think Myspace pissed anyone off, it was more that their product didn't make any sense. In my experience people didn't leave Myspace for Facebook because they "hated Myspace", they left because Facebook was a better product that met their needs. I don't think Twitter should be concerned unless someone builds a better product.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  > I don't think Twitter should be concerned unless someone builds a better product. Which is inevitable. Their clients are crappy, otherwise there wouldn't be a third-party ecosystem to piss off in the first place. Which means their only defense is network effects. Which means it's probably a bad idea to motivate all your early adopters to find and grow the network that unseats you.
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    I think you're really underestimating the value that "normal people" provide to Twitter, I would bet that the majority of Twitter users (that are active) are not "early adopters", but "normal people" that follow celebrities and talk to their friends. I left high school a few years back and the majority of my Facebook friends are ~19-20, almost all of them use Twitter and not a single one could write a line of code in any programming language, nor could they give a damn about whether or not Twitter is open to developers. Take a look at the Twitter trends list if you want proof that Twitter caters more to "normal people" than it does "technology" people, here's the #1 trend as I type this: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23NameATurnOn http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23NameATurnOn Yes, their only defense is their network (which is, in my opinion, their "product"), but the majority of their network is not going to leave because of their developer relations. Twitter are safe as long as an alternative doesn't exist and they provide value to their users. Twitter aren't stupid, they're not going to be enacting this plan if the majority of their users use third party clients. I suspect the majority of people that do use third party clients are those using "value adding" third party clients, like Hootsuite, and those that use Hootsuite are the people that get value from Twitter's network (for example marketing people) so if Hootsuite shuts down they're not going to quit Twitter, they're going to move to an official client.
    - MBCook 14y ago
      Myspace was full of normal people too, not just hardcore early adopters. AOL was full of normal people, only geeks wanted real TCP/IP to surf and play games. If your client annoys people too much, they'll move on too. Nullsoft learned that the hard way with Winamp 3. Gnome may be in the middle of that lesson right now.
danilocampos 14y ago
Entirely so – they died from a stagnant product and a hideous experience. But whether MySpace died from Twitter's flavor of incompetence or not is irrelevant to the point that the end result is going to look comically similar.

Permit 14y ago

If I use Twitter, it's not because of third party products. While I could see a decision like this severely impacting Facebook, whose applications I do use from time to time, I don't know that it will hurt Twitter. Are there any ground breaking Twitter applications that are keeping users around? If not, why would they need to make themselves a platform?

Firehed 14y ago
I see myself using Twitter a lot less if I had to use their mobile app, rather than a third-party one that doesn't suck (I use TweetBot exclusively). Conversely, I use no third-party Facebook applications, unless you count FB Connect as a more than a SSO mechanism (i.e., I'm not actually using FB or its network benefits on any site/app using FBC).

continuations 14y ago

The vast majority of Twitter users don't use Twitter because they like the 3rd party apps. They use Twitter because they could get constant updates from Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. 3rd party apps means nothing to them as long as Bieber and Gaga are still on Twitter.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Facebook could subvert that in an instant. Literally tomorrow, if they wanted to do so.
- continuations 14y ago
  Facebook has been trying to so for ages with their "subscribe" button.
  - nmcfarl 14y ago
    If that’s considered "wanting to subvert Twitter", it’s not twitter who’s in trouble. But I suspect (and hope) that’s not Facebook’s end game with subscribe.
danilocampos 14y ago
> 3rd party apps means nothing to them as long as Bieber and Gaga are still on Twitter. Truth. > They use Twitter because they could get constant updates from Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Also true. > The vast majority of Twitter users don't use Twitter because they like the 3rd party apps. True again. And entirely missing the point. New technologies are driven by early adopters. And Twitter is in the very unique position of having flipped a lever that alienates that precise population all at once. So they'll move on to the next big thing, build up the network, and eventually Bieber will move over because it's actually not hard to build a better product than Twitter. Their only insurance is network effects, and they've undermined that advantage by delivering the most perfect gift basket packed with early adopters to Dalton Caldwell.
- 14y ago

Steko 14y ago

Matt Yglesias had an interesting idea [1] when he pointed out that instead of being obsessed with selling display ads in tweet streams they should have monetized the tweet streams themselves. I wonder if it alienating Gaga/Bieber would turn out any better for them then alienating developers though. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/25/twitter_shouldn_t_become_an_advertising_platform_it_already_is_one.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/07/25/twitter_shoul... [1] ... Twitter seems to clearly intend to move in the direction of becoming an advertising business. It seems like a mistake to me, if only because as it currently exists my twitter feed is already full of what amount to ads. A lot of the culprits are people just like me—journalists touting our latest articles. Then you have various other media personalities, celebrities, and authors investing in their personal brand. You have food trucks telling you about their location and local restaurants touting specials and deals. Every big company has one or more corporate twitter accounts these days for PR and marketing purposes. Rather than selling lots of ads on Twitter, Twitter could sell itself as a service to the large number of people and firms who are already organically using it as an advertising tool. Which is just to say that the Twitter user base seems ideal for a tiered pricing model. Most people on Twitter don't tweet that much, don't have very many followers, and don't particularly aspire to having a large number of followers. Then you have a relatively small minority of heavy users who are deliberately courting a mass Twitter audience. Just charge us! Let everyone with fewer than 500 followers use it for free, and then have a few tiers of pricing for people with large followings. Most people probably have no desire to pay for Twitter, but anyone who's bothered to amass 20,000 is obviously getting a lot of value from access to the Twitter audience and would pay for it. Meanwhile the broad mass of non-professional users could keep using a great no-charge ad-free service that creates the ecosystem pro users want to pay to gain access to.

ssclafani 14y ago
People who say that Twitter should just charge pro users don't get what Twitter is trying to achieve. Twitter doesn't want to be a million-dollar business, they want to be a billion-dollar business. They wont get there by charging users. Not even close.
- deleted 14y ago

ggggit 14y ago

I would tend to agree with your initial statement. Which is why I believe what nerds are ranting about on HN does make a difference. I would guess that other users will never find out about certain stuff unless the serious nerds let them- they are the "trend makers" so to speak. Whether popularity equals instant and lasting profit is another question. But no one can deny Twitter has become very popular. It's valuable because it's useful, even if it's not a winner in terms of profitability. (Much like Wikipedia.) Contrast this with the enormous number of developers who are focused on some mythical end user they can speculate about and that they know they can easily manipulate. Or with folks who are using PR and the tech media to fool investors and generate short-lived buzz amongst less savvy users. Internet VC guilty as charged. These guys are usually rational and know the scent of money a little better. But they cannot control what becomes popular, not like a mob of irrational, fussy nerds can. Free stuff frustrates a lot of developers. But do not forget the internet is in its infancy. We're still trying to get stuff working. That Twitter even works (the SMS part) is a blessing. Will App.net be able to make agreements with all the telcos as Twitter did? We shall see.