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The issue is one of lock-in. I think that we here on HN are a reasonable bunch. It's why I like this community. We don't begrudge our local pizza place earni

by mdasen 14y ago

The issue is one of lock-in. I think that we here on HN are a reasonable bunch. It's why I like this community. We don't begrudge our local pizza place earning profit off of us for providing us with a service. Similarly, we don't mind people in our own industry earning profit in exchange for a service. However, when a business involves network effects, the morality changes. If WordPress.com started charging exorbitant fees, cutting off functionality, or putting annoying ads everywhere, I could simply move my blog to any number of other hosts or self-host it and none of my readers would be any the wiser. However, Twitter grew because it offered this liberal, API-driven architecture that allowed tools to flourish and whatnot. Now, we're feeling like we're in a bait-and-switch moment and we can't leave because our followers have followed us on Twitter. If we left, we could no longer connect with them. We're stuck and unless Twitter does something so crappy that we're willing to start over, we have to live with it. Heck, if Twitter was like this from the beginning, would a competitor have gotten the growth that we gave Twitter? Let's say that Twitter and Jaiku committed to a 15-year feature set as part of a community promise in 2006. Twitter told us as users and prospective users (before we built large follower networks) that they were going to shut down third party access and plaster ads over the feeds while Jaiku told us that they would commit to ensuring third party access, but might run ads. Would we have looked at Twitter and Jaiku and given Jaiku the growth and network? I know it's unreasonable to ask a company to commit to a 15 year feature set. I'm not suggesting that we have any rights to force Twitter to act how we deem proper. However, when a company creates a lock-in system (like Twitter does with followers) and they perform a bait-and-switch, I think we do have the right to be mildly annoyed and to point out that this might not be the most moral way of acting. Lock-in allows companies to act against their users in a way we should be against. That doesn't mean we're against profit. For example, there was a pizza place near me that offered a large cheese pizza for $5. It wasn't especially good pizza, but it was $5 and my roommate and I loved it for that. Later, they raised the price to $7.80 (IIRC). I assume it wasn't so profitable at $5. However, at nearly $8, we felt we'd rather pay an additional couple dollars to get better pizza. We didn't begrudge the store their price hike. We didn't feel they owed us cheap pizza. Why? Because they held no power over us. We could re-make our decision as things changed. For those of us using Twitter, we can't re-make that decision. Twitter got some of us to use their service because of things they're now taking away. Maybe other competitors would have had more traction if Twitter acted this way from the start. But they locked us in and then acted in a way inconsistent to what got them the lock-in. That's bad. It isn't take to the streets bad. It isn't quit the service bad. But it is bad enough to blog and/or comment about. The issue isn't that we want to deny Twitter the ability to profit. The issue is that Twitter locked us in and now we feel like we don't have other options for that style of communication. Twitter has become a sort-of monopoly over that type of communication and they might start using that monopoly power not to merely become profitable, but to become more profitable than a competitive market would allow - at our expense. In some ways, it's tough to be a monopolist. Everyone gets to take shots at you. In a competitive market, people generally don't take shots so much because they don't care: they'll just move along to something else that makes them happy. Twitter's changes are making some people unhappy. Maybe no other service could be profitable doing less - that is entirely possible. It's entirely possible that Twitter is being as awesome as possible and that they're nearly saintly in their devotion to their users needs - as much as is humanly and technologically possible. However, we don't and won't know that because of Twitter's lock-in and because of that lock-in, these changes might not feel like Twitter trying to merely continue along and earn a modest profit for its investors, but an exercise of power over us. That sounds more dramatic than I meant it to. I mean, it's Twitter, not the heart surgery that someone needs. Still, it's annoying when we feel someone isn't dealing with us in a square way. When there are loads of competitors, we can say "well, it just costs about that much to get me a pizza." When there's only one competitor, we become less forgiving because monopoly power has been levied against us in the past to our detriment. There are loads of alternatives to 37signals' products. There are loads of alternatives to WordPress.com. There are loads of other local pizza places. The same isn't true of Twitter.

markokocic 14y ago
I agree with the complaint about the lock in that's the problem for some of the users. But it's a lock in only if one consider twitter vastly different than other services. I don't see it a unique snowflake. There's no a big difference between Facebook wall and twitter. That being said, I might be missing something, since I never saw any use for twitter. I would use it just for promoting my business if I were in marketing department, and seems like that's the path to monetization twitter is heading to. Also, I can't see twitter as a monopoly. Monopoly to what? They have a monopol on SMS length message network run on internet? Yes, twitter has a monopoly on twitter. It's not like they have a monopoly in complete social and news network market. Everyone creating a twitter client or application should have known that twitter can refuse to let it run, or change the rules. They have been pretty clear about that, and they have been doing it for a while. That's their right to do so. There is a feeling of betrayal amongst developers, but it was their choice to build a product upon platform they don't control, in the same way as iPhone developers that know that Apple can just refuse to let them in the app store, but they still build for that platform.
- mdasen 14y ago
  Twitter is different from Facebook. Facebook's news feed filters posts. I don't get all posts by people I know nor do I get every update from pages I like. Likewise, until recently, Facebook didn't have a "follow" feature like Twitter does. While Facebook and Twitter overlap in some ways, Facebook has always felt like symmetric relationships and privacy settings while Twitter has always felt like public postings and asymmetric relationships. In terms of the monopoly comment, Twitter is the one or one of two places where people can "follow" you. RSS/Atom are pretty much dead. Twitter has a monopoly on a network where you can post things and those postings show up in your followers' feeds. The recent spat about Facebook makes it clear that their news feed will never show your postings to a majority of your followers unless you pay to promote it. With Twitter, I see each posting that anyone I follow posts. Twitter became the place to follow people you don't know and to post things to be read by people you don't know. Twitter allows me to aggregate many people's micro-blogs into one feed. Facebook doesn't allow this since I don't see all posts and there really isn't another micro-blog/status message system. If there is another, I'd be interested in knowing about it. However, even if you made a Twitter clone, the issue remains that with no people using it, it isn't helpful. Facebook simply doesn't meet the need that Twitter does. I'm realizing that I've forgotten about Google+, but ultimately any of these closed services are only as big/useful as the network of people using it. Really, it would have been better if something more open had taken off, maybe based on RSS that would have allowed a multi-network solution. If tweets are public, it's easy to publish RSS feeds of the tweets and for a third party service to aggregate them. Twitter and Twitter2 could be competing services on UI and such and merely read the feeds of the other so that users of either network could follow users of the other network. This could be generalized to any number of competitors. In many ways, this is what FriendFeed was trying to do: allow you to follow people on many services rather than being locked into closed networks. However, Twitter's initial liberal openness might have stunted that. Twitter is so open. Why not build your network on Twitter rather than creating a network of sites? Companies have the right to change their service offerings. We don't have the right to force them to continue to offer what they used to offer. However, when a company uses a somewhat liberal, open philosophy to grow its user base and lock us in and later decides to switch that bait, it's quite reasonable to be annoyed. Twitter didn't rise to its market power via the new policies. They used very liberal policies initially to grow and make sure that competitors didn't capture that growth. Now that they've locked-in lots of users and competitors have left the market, they're using their new power to act differently. Again, it's completely possible that even with competition, Twitter's ne behavior is the best a company can do to remain profitable and they acting in the absolute best way possible. However, if they had these policies from the start, would someone else have gained their growth instead? If they didn't have this lock-in, could someone else be profitable without resorting to these changes? Ultimately, when companies are able to exert power over us, it's a bad thing. It's a bad thing when Apple does it, it's a bad thing when Twitter does it, it was a bad thing when Microsoft did it, etc. I'm not saying that it rises to the level of doing anything about it beyond moaning on HN ;-). However, it isn't something that we should be pleased with. It's something that we should acknowledge as sub-optimal. In an optimal situation, we would have choices and be able to move to competitors without hardship and that would (hopefully) lead to companies acting in the most user-friendly way they could while still remaining profitable. Optimal solutions aren't always possible, but Twitter's moves just feel not so nice. They feel like bait-and-switch techniques and that we can't just change services. It isn't evil, it isn't even particularly important - I mean, in human history, it probably won't warrant a footnote. But it's bad for us as users when a company does one thing while it has competition, that competition dies off, and then they switch to another mode of business. Again, that sounds way over-dramatic for what I'm trying to convey which is merely that these changes have come about because Twitter has gained power not due to them and are using that to make their non-important (in the life, health, shelter way) product a little worse for us. However, it's an anti-user use of power that rises to the level of moaning about it on the internet.

by mdasen 14y ago

markokocic 14y ago

I agree with the complaint about the lock in that's the problem for some of the users. But it's a lock in only if one consider twitter vastly different than other services. I don't see it a unique snowflake. There's no a big difference between Facebook wall and twitter. That being said, I might be missing something, since I never saw any use for twitter. I would use it just for promoting my business if I were in marketing department, and seems like that's the path to monetization twitter is heading to. Also, I can't see twitter as a monopoly. Monopoly to what? They have a monopol on SMS length message network run on internet? Yes, twitter has a monopoly on twitter. It's not like they have a monopoly in complete social and news network market. Everyone creating a twitter client or application should have known that twitter can refuse to let it run, or change the rules. They have been pretty clear about that, and they have been doing it for a while. That's their right to do so. There is a feeling of betrayal amongst developers, but it was their choice to build a product upon platform they don't control, in the same way as iPhone developers that know that Apple can just refuse to let them in the app store, but they still build for that platform.

mdasen 14y ago
Twitter is different from Facebook. Facebook's news feed filters posts. I don't get all posts by people I know nor do I get every update from pages I like. Likewise, until recently, Facebook didn't have a "follow" feature like Twitter does. While Facebook and Twitter overlap in some ways, Facebook has always felt like symmetric relationships and privacy settings while Twitter has always felt like public postings and asymmetric relationships. In terms of the monopoly comment, Twitter is the one or one of two places where people can "follow" you. RSS/Atom are pretty much dead. Twitter has a monopoly on a network where you can post things and those postings show up in your followers' feeds. The recent spat about Facebook makes it clear that their news feed will never show your postings to a majority of your followers unless you pay to promote it. With Twitter, I see each posting that anyone I follow posts. Twitter became the place to follow people you don't know and to post things to be read by people you don't know. Twitter allows me to aggregate many people's micro-blogs into one feed. Facebook doesn't allow this since I don't see all posts and there really isn't another micro-blog/status message system. If there is another, I'd be interested in knowing about it. However, even if you made a Twitter clone, the issue remains that with no people using it, it isn't helpful. Facebook simply doesn't meet the need that Twitter does. I'm realizing that I've forgotten about Google+, but ultimately any of these closed services are only as big/useful as the network of people using it. Really, it would have been better if something more open had taken off, maybe based on RSS that would have allowed a multi-network solution. If tweets are public, it's easy to publish RSS feeds of the tweets and for a third party service to aggregate them. Twitter and Twitter2 could be competing services on UI and such and merely read the feeds of the other so that users of either network could follow users of the other network. This could be generalized to any number of competitors. In many ways, this is what FriendFeed was trying to do: allow you to follow people on many services rather than being locked into closed networks. However, Twitter's initial liberal openness might have stunted that. Twitter is so open. Why not build your network on Twitter rather than creating a network of sites? Companies have the right to change their service offerings. We don't have the right to force them to continue to offer what they used to offer. However, when a company uses a somewhat liberal, open philosophy to grow its user base and lock us in and later decides to switch that bait, it's quite reasonable to be annoyed. Twitter didn't rise to its market power via the new policies. They used very liberal policies initially to grow and make sure that competitors didn't capture that growth. Now that they've locked-in lots of users and competitors have left the market, they're using their new power to act differently. Again, it's completely possible that even with competition, Twitter's ne behavior is the best a company can do to remain profitable and they acting in the absolute best way possible. However, if they had these policies from the start, would someone else have gained their growth instead? If they didn't have this lock-in, could someone else be profitable without resorting to these changes? Ultimately, when companies are able to exert power over us, it's a bad thing. It's a bad thing when Apple does it, it's a bad thing when Twitter does it, it was a bad thing when Microsoft did it, etc. I'm not saying that it rises to the level of doing anything about it beyond moaning on HN ;-). However, it isn't something that we should be pleased with. It's something that we should acknowledge as sub-optimal. In an optimal situation, we would have choices and be able to move to competitors without hardship and that would (hopefully) lead to companies acting in the most user-friendly way they could while still remaining profitable. Optimal solutions aren't always possible, but Twitter's moves just feel not so nice. They feel like bait-and-switch techniques and that we can't just change services. It isn't evil, it isn't even particularly important - I mean, in human history, it probably won't warrant a footnote. But it's bad for us as users when a company does one thing while it has competition, that competition dies off, and then they switch to another mode of business. Again, that sounds way over-dramatic for what I'm trying to convey which is merely that these changes have come about because Twitter has gained power not due to them and are using that to make their non-important (in the life, health, shelter way) product a little worse for us. However, it's an anti-user use of power that rises to the level of moaning about it on the internet.