4 ms·

Twitter Removes 'Via' Stamp From Web Client

171 points by twapi 14y ago

rhizome 14y ago
"First-party clients" is certainly a new euphemism in this context.
uptown 14y ago
Twitter's image would be better served by the bandaid-removal approach. Everything bad - all at once, rather than this drip-drip-drip of changes perceived to be hostile towards its developer community. You have to figure they've got a road-map of where this heads, so why not do it all at once and consolidate the pain?
- wamatt 14y ago
  Actually I agree with you in this case, given the massive amount of attention on Twitter now, but in situations of lesser scrutiny, the 'drip-drip-drip' is often the the more cunning move. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy and all the related concepts, eg boiling the frog etc.
  - 001sky 14y ago
    Most of what is creeping these days is way too debatable...
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    Except you know, if you boil a frog slowly, it will still jump out. http://www.fastcompany.com/26455/next-time-what-say-we-boil-consultant http://www.fastcompany.com/26455/next-time-what-say-we-boil-... IE needs more actual examples, instead of metaphors that turn out to be completely wrong in practice.
- joevandyk 14y ago
  Because incremental change is way easier to manage and deploy and test than massive ones.
  - rst 14y ago
    In technical rollouts, yes. But twitter's ticking people off with a bunch of new policies...
- dchuk 14y ago
  "Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more." - Niccolo Machiavelli
  - mbreese 14y ago
    I'm not sure that Twitter can afford to be feared - they need to be loved. Twitter doesn't lord over a Renaissance Italian fiefdom; their serfs can migrate to other city-states at will. But first, there needs to be another city-state.
    - xfernandox 14y ago
      Perhaps app.net could be the other city-state?
      - fakeer 14y ago
        Yes, a walled (maybe) and elite city-state at current rates.
        xfernandox 14y ago
        Yeah I don't see Joe the Plumber moving there any time soon.
    - graue 14y ago
      I mentioned this in the Tweetbot thread, but http://rstat.us http://rstat.us looks very promising. They syndicate your posts to Twitter, are working on a Twitter-compatible API[1], and use OStatus so are compatible with other services running the protocol (like the somewhat more neglected-looking identi.ca). [1] https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us/tree/twitter-api https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us/tree/twitter-api
    - bpatrianakos 14y ago
      Twitter can't afford to be feated? Sure it can! The only people who could possibly fear twitter are developers. Regular Twitter users mostly don't give a crap. They jump on whatever client they like, Tweet a bit, read a bit, and go about their lives. I really think developers are really overestimating our importance to Twitter at this point. We're a small portion of Twitter's users and they arguably don't need us anymore. We made it popular and better but now they can cut off access to their API completely and replace all third party functionality and our screams would echo in our echo chamber but fall on deaf ears the moment it escaped the chamber. Non-developer users may shed a tear and write an angry blog post but they'll all forget, move on to the new official Twitter apps and the rest of us will still be complaining about it on HN (a couple hundred of us may pay to scream about it on app.net in protest too). It's not right but it is what it is. I think it's better to accept this now rather than have to deal with our denial later. Edit: I mentioned they could cut off all functionality. That was hyperbole obviously but they can cut off access to a hefty chunk of the API and replace what third parties are doing nonetheless.
- mehulkar 14y ago
  What's more interesting is that each of these little drips is turning into front page news material. Every time the giant shifts in its sleep, the villagers run amuck.
tzaman 14y ago
It was about time, always wondered how 'via' improved user experience in any way. EDIT: since I'm getting downvoted because some of you don't agree: There's like 140M active Twitter users (as of March 2012) and like, 30 clients (guesstimating). If I assume there's like 1M developers on Twitter (which I don't think it is), this feature is still useful to less than 1% of their user base. Not exactly a "must have" feature IMHO.
- brimanning 14y ago
  It certainly encouraged innovative and creative developers.
  - tzaman 14y ago
    And how exactly is that?
    - gsibble 14y ago
      Free publicity for their new twitter clients and tools.
- mikeash 14y ago
  It helped people discover new Twitter clients by seeing what other people were posting with. I'll admit that this benefit may not have been anywhere near worth the added clutter and screen space, but it was good for something.
  - commandar 14y ago
    Exactly. I found out about new clients quite a few times because of the via stamp.
  - twapi 14y ago
    and it helped me to remove useless/automated tweets from timeline using a home-made greasemonkey/user script.
c16 14y ago
The API changes stated that they wanted all clients to look the same and to have a similar experience. Could this be a hint that they want to rule out 3rd party clients slowly but surely?
- RexRollman 14y ago
  I think they are more concerned about users avoiding ads than they are about a consistent user interface.
porterhaney 14y ago
I really liked the via tag for one purpose. Buffer. I liked to know when folks were live tweeting versus time delayed tweeting as it gave me context. If they were live, I'd respond. If they weren't I'd just consumer the content (if interested) and move on.
brianstorms 14y ago
This is an unfortunate move. I found it very useful to see who was tweeting using an app that suggested it's the real person, versus tweets coming from large, paid enterprise apps using Twitter's API -- big "social media management" software that a marketing organization would use to schedule tweets at pre-designated times.
dj2stein9 14y ago
This is very clearly the end of Twitter as a "platform". Now that Twitter is huge, they don't want or need developers or 3rd party clients. They want to centralize everything into a monetizable service. That would've been fine if that was their plan from the get-go. The bait-n-switch they're doing disingenuous at the least. So what now? Status.net hasn't gained traction, and it's obviously too early to say anything about tent.io, but I am very, very hopeful that eventually a new open, decentralized platform/protocol will emerge as the next-generation social communications platform to replace both Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.
- kylek 14y ago
  dramatic much? it's not like 3rd party clients stopped working
  - dj2stein9 14y ago
    You'd have to be silly to not expect what Twitters next move will be.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
knodi 14y ago
Not too long now before twitter releases pricing?
- ruswick 14y ago
  Pricing for what? Users? That would be an unequivocal death knell. Developers? Possibly. However, it's doubtful that Twitter stands to gain any significant revenue from charging for an API. Their audience for advertising is so much larger and more lucrative, a paid API would be of trivial importance to their bottom line and a waste of time. I don't think they'll charge for anything. Doing so would relegate them to the same, minuscule potential user base as App.net has.
zhuzhuor 14y ago
one more step closer to monopoly
fsniper 14y ago
I'm sick of this kind of twitter stories. This is just a hype about Twitters' internal affairs. Their business. Why on earth this is top news or even on frontpage? They have just skipped showing 2 words. If the story was about "how twitter hypothetically screwed and made 2 man hours work of deleting two words from tweets 2 man days of work" I'd be more willing to read it. Please - this is not about hacking, this is not about technology, this is not even about entrepreneurship - I would really love stories about twitter's opensource projects, twitter's technology choice, twitter's software development methodologies, twitter's devels' thoughts about samsung-apple case. But this is not news worthy. At least not news worthy for Hacker News.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  Tell ya what I'm sick of. This kind of comment. Why on earth should I care what some anonymous person thinks is newsworthy? You've got a counter right there showing you exactly how many people find it worth reading. If it's interesting, read it and/or comment. If it's not, scroll past. Flag if you want. But the only thing less newsworthy than a given story is your assessment of its newsworthiness.
  - fsniper 14y ago
    So why are you not just skipping my comment and wasting your precious time on answering me?
    - netcan 14y ago
      Why are you not just skipping this story and wasting your precious time commenting on it?
  - fsniper 14y ago
    Look, there is something wrong about this. This story has 97 point at time of my writing, 44 comments. It's top story. Learning C with gdb story has 297 points, 80 comments and it's on third row.
twodayslate 14y ago
This should not be surprising to any of you.
nicholassmith 14y ago
"We've always been at war with third-party clients." Twitter needs to shit or get off the pot. Either they want a nice big ecosystem and they make money by leveraging their ridiculous amount of 3rd-party traffic, or they listen to the biz dev guys with their nice haircuts and just force all traffic through their official points. It's so wishy-washy, with the Tweetbot Alpha token pull, and this it's very clear they're saying this is the new way but through so many layers of subtext it's like reading a management presentation on blue-sky thinking.

171 points by twapi 14y ago

"First-party clients" is certainly a new euphemism in this context.

Twitter's image would be better served by the bandaid-removal approach. Everything bad - all at once, rather than this drip-drip-drip of changes perceived to be hostile towards its developer community. You have to figure they've got a road-map of where this heads, so why not do it all at once and consolidate the pain?

wamatt 14y ago
Actually I agree with you in this case, given the massive amount of attention on Twitter now, but in situations of lesser scrutiny, the 'drip-drip-drip' is often the the more cunning move. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy and all the related concepts, eg boiling the frog etc.
- 001sky 14y ago
  Most of what is creeping these days is way too debatable...
- DannyBee 14y ago
  Except you know, if you boil a frog slowly, it will still jump out. http://www.fastcompany.com/26455/next-time-what-say-we-boil-consultant http://www.fastcompany.com/26455/next-time-what-say-we-boil-... IE needs more actual examples, instead of metaphors that turn out to be completely wrong in practice.
joevandyk 14y ago
Because incremental change is way easier to manage and deploy and test than massive ones.
- rst 14y ago
  In technical rollouts, yes. But twitter's ticking people off with a bunch of new policies...
dchuk 14y ago
"Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more." - Niccolo Machiavelli
- mbreese 14y ago
  I'm not sure that Twitter can afford to be feared - they need to be loved. Twitter doesn't lord over a Renaissance Italian fiefdom; their serfs can migrate to other city-states at will. But first, there needs to be another city-state.
  - xfernandox 14y ago
    Perhaps app.net could be the other city-state?
    - fakeer 14y ago
      Yes, a walled (maybe) and elite city-state at current rates.
      - xfernandox 14y ago
        Yeah I don't see Joe the Plumber moving there any time soon.
  - graue 14y ago
    I mentioned this in the Tweetbot thread, but http://rstat.us http://rstat.us looks very promising. They syndicate your posts to Twitter, are working on a Twitter-compatible API[1], and use OStatus so are compatible with other services running the protocol (like the somewhat more neglected-looking identi.ca). [1] https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us/tree/twitter-api https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us/tree/twitter-api
  - bpatrianakos 14y ago
    Twitter can't afford to be feated? Sure it can! The only people who could possibly fear twitter are developers. Regular Twitter users mostly don't give a crap. They jump on whatever client they like, Tweet a bit, read a bit, and go about their lives. I really think developers are really overestimating our importance to Twitter at this point. We're a small portion of Twitter's users and they arguably don't need us anymore. We made it popular and better but now they can cut off access to their API completely and replace all third party functionality and our screams would echo in our echo chamber but fall on deaf ears the moment it escaped the chamber. Non-developer users may shed a tear and write an angry blog post but they'll all forget, move on to the new official Twitter apps and the rest of us will still be complaining about it on HN (a couple hundred of us may pay to scream about it on app.net in protest too). It's not right but it is what it is. I think it's better to accept this now rather than have to deal with our denial later. Edit: I mentioned they could cut off all functionality. That was hyperbole obviously but they can cut off access to a hefty chunk of the API and replace what third parties are doing nonetheless.
mehulkar 14y ago
What's more interesting is that each of these little drips is turning into front page news material. Every time the giant shifts in its sleep, the villagers run amuck.

tzaman 14y ago

It was about time, always wondered how 'via' improved user experience in any way. EDIT: since I'm getting downvoted because some of you don't agree: There's like 140M active Twitter users (as of March 2012) and like, 30 clients (guesstimating). If I assume there's like 1M developers on Twitter (which I don't think it is), this feature is still useful to less than 1% of their user base. Not exactly a "must have" feature IMHO.

brimanning 14y ago
It certainly encouraged innovative and creative developers.
- tzaman 14y ago
  And how exactly is that?
  - gsibble 14y ago
    Free publicity for their new twitter clients and tools.
mikeash 14y ago
It helped people discover new Twitter clients by seeing what other people were posting with. I'll admit that this benefit may not have been anywhere near worth the added clutter and screen space, but it was good for something.
- commandar 14y ago
  Exactly. I found out about new clients quite a few times because of the via stamp.
- twapi 14y ago
  and it helped me to remove useless/automated tweets from timeline using a home-made greasemonkey/user script.

c16 14y ago

The API changes stated that they wanted all clients to look the same and to have a similar experience. Could this be a hint that they want to rule out 3rd party clients slowly but surely?

RexRollman 14y ago
I think they are more concerned about users avoiding ads than they are about a consistent user interface.

porterhaney 14y ago

I really liked the via tag for one purpose. Buffer. I liked to know when folks were live tweeting versus time delayed tweeting as it gave me context. If they were live, I'd respond. If they weren't I'd just consumer the content (if interested) and move on.

brianstorms 14y ago

This is an unfortunate move. I found it very useful to see who was tweeting using an app that suggested it's the real person, versus tweets coming from large, paid enterprise apps using Twitter's API -- big "social media management" software that a marketing organization would use to schedule tweets at pre-designated times.

dj2stein9 14y ago

This is very clearly the end of Twitter as a "platform". Now that Twitter is huge, they don't want or need developers or 3rd party clients. They want to centralize everything into a monetizable service. That would've been fine if that was their plan from the get-go. The bait-n-switch they're doing disingenuous at the least. So what now? Status.net hasn't gained traction, and it's obviously too early to say anything about tent.io, but I am very, very hopeful that eventually a new open, decentralized platform/protocol will emerge as the next-generation social communications platform to replace both Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

kylek 14y ago
dramatic much? it's not like 3rd party clients stopped working
- dj2stein9 14y ago
  You'd have to be silly to not expect what Twitters next move will be.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

knodi 14y ago

Not too long now before twitter releases pricing?

ruswick 14y ago
Pricing for what? Users? That would be an unequivocal death knell. Developers? Possibly. However, it's doubtful that Twitter stands to gain any significant revenue from charging for an API. Their audience for advertising is so much larger and more lucrative, a paid API would be of trivial importance to their bottom line and a waste of time. I don't think they'll charge for anything. Doing so would relegate them to the same, minuscule potential user base as App.net has.

zhuzhuor 14y ago

one more step closer to monopoly

fsniper 14y ago

I'm sick of this kind of twitter stories. This is just a hype about Twitters' internal affairs. Their business. Why on earth this is top news or even on frontpage? They have just skipped showing 2 words. If the story was about "how twitter hypothetically screwed and made 2 man hours work of deleting two words from tweets 2 man days of work" I'd be more willing to read it. Please - this is not about hacking, this is not about technology, this is not even about entrepreneurship - I would really love stories about twitter's opensource projects, twitter's technology choice, twitter's software development methodologies, twitter's devels' thoughts about samsung-apple case. But this is not news worthy. At least not news worthy for Hacker News.

danilocampos 14y ago
Tell ya what I'm sick of. This kind of comment. Why on earth should I care what some anonymous person thinks is newsworthy? You've got a counter right there showing you exactly how many people find it worth reading. If it's interesting, read it and/or comment. If it's not, scroll past. Flag if you want. But the only thing less newsworthy than a given story is your assessment of its newsworthiness.
- fsniper 14y ago
  So why are you not just skipping my comment and wasting your precious time on answering me?
  - netcan 14y ago
    Why are you not just skipping this story and wasting your precious time commenting on it?
- fsniper 14y ago
  Look, there is something wrong about this. This story has 97 point at time of my writing, 44 comments. It's top story. Learning C with gdb story has 297 points, 80 comments and it's on third row.

twodayslate 14y ago

This should not be surprising to any of you.

nicholassmith 14y ago

"We've always been at war with third-party clients." Twitter needs to shit or get off the pot. Either they want a nice big ecosystem and they make money by leveraging their ridiculous amount of 3rd-party traffic, or they listen to the biz dev guys with their nice haircuts and just force all traffic through their official points. It's so wishy-washy, with the Tweetbot Alpha token pull, and this it's very clear they're saying this is the new way but through so many layers of subtext it's like reading a management presentation on blue-sky thinking.