4 ms·

Suggestion to Twitter: Here’s how you monetize without ruining your ecosystem

26 points by pytrin 14y ago

diego 14y ago
Yes, there is more to it than you're aware of. For starters, how do you think Twitter's API customers would monetize their applications? They would be paying Twitter for the privilege of attempting to monetize tweets. It only makes sense to pay if they can extract more value than Twitter can. If someone finds a way to monetize tweets that's more effective than Twitter's, then Twitter would have an incentive to copy it, therefore competing with its customers. Long story short, that's the reason Google stopped selling white label search via its api to customers like Yahoo ten years ago.
- pytrin 14y ago
  I think you missed the point of the article. Right now, Twitter has rigid limits in place - you don't think it'd be better for developers to at least know in advance they can go past that limit, even if it means they have to pay? There are many uses for twitter data outside of just repeating the tweets with a different design. There are quite a few Twitter apps that generate revenue and some have also been acquired by bigger companies. Twitter and Google main service offering are not comparable, since Twitter has the actual data while Google is a gateway.
  - diego 14y ago
    I didn't miss the point. Twitter does not want developers to go past that limit. Pay or no pay, it doesn't matter to Twitter. It's not part of the plan.
    - pytrin 14y ago
      Glad to hear this was never a discussion. You should've just stated originally that you know exactly what twitter wants, and left it there.
      - diego 14y ago
        Have you spoken with someone at Twitter about this? I have. If you haven't, there's nothing to discuss.
        pytrin 14y ago
        So you've specifically asked someone in a position to make those decisions at twitter, whether they'd considered taxing their API? and they told you explicitly "No, we want to cap API usage regardless if it can be a profitable channel or not"
    - hythloday 14y ago
      From the actual announcement: "we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens"[0] which sounds like "show us the money" to me. You can of course assert that "we want to talk to you" obviously means "we don't want to talk to you", but once you do so without evidence you're firmly in tinfoil hat territory. [0] https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api
      - diego 14y ago
        Of course they mean they want to talk to you. But that doesn't mean they want money. More likely they'd want to acqui(hi)re you and incorporate whatever made made you successful into their product.
        denzil_correa 14y ago
        Which in some sense is still wanting the money!
badclient 14y ago
Each has its own merits in the context of sports competitiveness, but in Twitter's case there is no reason for a hard cap at all. What does Twitter gain by putting a hard limit on API usage? There is a reason for a hard cap: the limit's goal is to ensure twitter-owned clients dominate the market for basic twitter use. You may have a point by saying that twitter can simply make the tax per additional tweet equal to the approximate revenue they plan to lose as a result. But that figure may be hard to calculate, especially its long-term value. So even if a company is willing to pay 5x to twitter per additional tweet over the hard limit, twitter doesn't know the long-term impact of it
- pytrin 14y ago
  My argument is that they'd make much more revenue by taxing API than they hope to make with ads. Their API usage is obscene and growing rapidly, while ads don't really fit their users usage patterns.
  - diego 14y ago
    They are making hundreds of millions of dollars with ads. What do you mean by "ads don't really fit their users usage patterns"? I hate ads as much as anyone, but they are working for Twitter. If you think Twitter's executives don't know what they are doing, you underestimate them.
    - pytrin 14y ago
      According to this article, they made $140M in 2011 from ads. Of course, they project to make 3 times as much by 2014, but that remains to be seen. I think they can make much more by leveraging their API usage, which is larger than all the other large tech companies. http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/31/twitters-advertising-revenue-is-predicted-to-triple-by-2014-to-reach-540-million/ http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/31/twitters-advertisin... Regarding ads, people consume twitter for opinions, networking and links to content. They are rarely with purchase intent, as opposed to when they are actively searching something on Google, for instance. Facebook are facing a similar problem with their ads, but Facebook still has a much larger userbase and the time spent on the site is much larger than with Twitter. Promoted tweets are too obvious and often have a reverse effect on people who receive it.
gk_jam 14y ago
All these articles claiming Twitter is restricting developers using their API are all missing one important distinction: Twitter is only restricting Twitter client developers. There are hosts of other developers who are using the Twitter API with no restrictions, those building value add services in Social CRM (social media monitoring, analytics, data reselling, sentiment analysis, etc). Yes, Twitter's new ecosystem is geared towards the B2B market. But to say they're restricting developers across the board just isn't true. However, it seems most of the tech blogs tend to think only of consumer-facing client apps as the members of the Twitter ecosystem, and so forget about all the other apps out there, the ones they're not restricting.
- dustyreagan 14y ago
  Well, I think the point is, building Twitter clients use to be allowed, even encouraged, by Twitter. And now it's a big no-no. So even though they're only restricting new client development, the restriction affect anyone developing with the Twitter API. What's not to say the type of app you're building today won't be restricted tomorrow.
scott_s 14y ago
As I understand it, Twitter already makes plenty of money off of their data. Many companies are interested in getting access to more data than what's available for free, and they pay for it. Check out DataSift and Gnip: they are resellers of various social media data.

26 points by pytrin 14y ago

diego 14y ago

Yes, there is more to it than you're aware of. For starters, how do you think Twitter's API customers would monetize their applications? They would be paying Twitter for the privilege of attempting to monetize tweets. It only makes sense to pay if they can extract more value than Twitter can. If someone finds a way to monetize tweets that's more effective than Twitter's, then Twitter would have an incentive to copy it, therefore competing with its customers. Long story short, that's the reason Google stopped selling white label search via its api to customers like Yahoo ten years ago.

pytrin 14y ago
I think you missed the point of the article. Right now, Twitter has rigid limits in place - you don't think it'd be better for developers to at least know in advance they can go past that limit, even if it means they have to pay? There are many uses for twitter data outside of just repeating the tweets with a different design. There are quite a few Twitter apps that generate revenue and some have also been acquired by bigger companies. Twitter and Google main service offering are not comparable, since Twitter has the actual data while Google is a gateway.
- diego 14y ago
  I didn't miss the point. Twitter does not want developers to go past that limit. Pay or no pay, it doesn't matter to Twitter. It's not part of the plan.
  - pytrin 14y ago
    Glad to hear this was never a discussion. You should've just stated originally that you know exactly what twitter wants, and left it there.
    - diego 14y ago
      Have you spoken with someone at Twitter about this? I have. If you haven't, there's nothing to discuss.
      - pytrin 14y ago
        So you've specifically asked someone in a position to make those decisions at twitter, whether they'd considered taxing their API? and they told you explicitly "No, we want to cap API usage regardless if it can be a profitable channel or not"
  - hythloday 14y ago
    From the actual announcement: "we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens"[0] which sounds like "show us the money" to me. You can of course assert that "we want to talk to you" obviously means "we don't want to talk to you", but once you do so without evidence you're firmly in tinfoil hat territory. [0] https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api
    - diego 14y ago
      Of course they mean they want to talk to you. But that doesn't mean they want money. More likely they'd want to acqui(hi)re you and incorporate whatever made made you successful into their product.
      - denzil_correa 14y ago
        Which in some sense is still wanting the money!

badclient 14y ago

Each has its own merits in the context of sports competitiveness, but in Twitter's case there is no reason for a hard cap at all. What does Twitter gain by putting a hard limit on API usage? There is a reason for a hard cap: the limit's goal is to ensure twitter-owned clients dominate the market for basic twitter use. You may have a point by saying that twitter can simply make the tax per additional tweet equal to the approximate revenue they plan to lose as a result. But that figure may be hard to calculate, especially its long-term value. So even if a company is willing to pay 5x to twitter per additional tweet over the hard limit, twitter doesn't know the long-term impact of it

pytrin 14y ago
My argument is that they'd make much more revenue by taxing API than they hope to make with ads. Their API usage is obscene and growing rapidly, while ads don't really fit their users usage patterns.
- diego 14y ago
  They are making hundreds of millions of dollars with ads. What do you mean by "ads don't really fit their users usage patterns"? I hate ads as much as anyone, but they are working for Twitter. If you think Twitter's executives don't know what they are doing, you underestimate them.
  - pytrin 14y ago
    According to this article, they made $140M in 2011 from ads. Of course, they project to make 3 times as much by 2014, but that remains to be seen. I think they can make much more by leveraging their API usage, which is larger than all the other large tech companies. http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/31/twitters-advertising-revenue-is-predicted-to-triple-by-2014-to-reach-540-million/ http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/31/twitters-advertisin... Regarding ads, people consume twitter for opinions, networking and links to content. They are rarely with purchase intent, as opposed to when they are actively searching something on Google, for instance. Facebook are facing a similar problem with their ads, but Facebook still has a much larger userbase and the time spent on the site is much larger than with Twitter. Promoted tweets are too obvious and often have a reverse effect on people who receive it.

gk_jam 14y ago

All these articles claiming Twitter is restricting developers using their API are all missing one important distinction: Twitter is only restricting Twitter client developers. There are hosts of other developers who are using the Twitter API with no restrictions, those building value add services in Social CRM (social media monitoring, analytics, data reselling, sentiment analysis, etc). Yes, Twitter's new ecosystem is geared towards the B2B market. But to say they're restricting developers across the board just isn't true. However, it seems most of the tech blogs tend to think only of consumer-facing client apps as the members of the Twitter ecosystem, and so forget about all the other apps out there, the ones they're not restricting.

dustyreagan 14y ago
Well, I think the point is, building Twitter clients use to be allowed, even encouraged, by Twitter. And now it's a big no-no. So even though they're only restricting new client development, the restriction affect anyone developing with the Twitter API. What's not to say the type of app you're building today won't be restricted tomorrow.

scott_s 14y ago

As I understand it, Twitter already makes plenty of money off of their data. Many companies are interested in getting access to more data than what's available for free, and they pay for it. Check out DataSift and Gnip: they are resellers of various social media data.