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Twitter? It’s Not Fun Anymore

172 points by mkr-hn 14y ago

celticbadboy 14y ago
Not surprised at all. One could argue it was the API that attracted so many people to Twitter in the first place. It seemed really smart to me at first to create such a great ecosystem, but maybe there's more behind that scenes that I don't know about? Either way it's sad to see this service go. The guy seems nice and provided a good service, but clearly he's not going to spend a bunch of his own time and money if it's not rewarding anymore.
sbarre 14y ago
Could this be rebuilt for, or ported to, app.net? Seems like a good place for the author to continue what is obviously a project he cares about.
- orn 14y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking, thumbs up
- sdqali 14y ago
  Does App.net as a platform need an application with these capabilities? I would think that App.net has far less spam.
- sidawson 14y ago
  It would depend on app.net's data policies - how much (and how fast) we could get information out of them. Of course, they own the field, so they could change the rules at any time, thus (once again) killing the project. From a technical basis, 90% of the effort was building a robust system atop Twitter's. The actual core behavioural categorisation engine was relatively trivial. Ie, it would require a major rebuild, without lessening the risks at all.
btipling 14y ago
You don't have to make calls to get the rate limit left, it comes in the API response HTTP header. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting Look for these headers: X-FeatureRateLimit-Limit X-FeatureRateLimit-Remaining X-FeatureRateLimit-Reset
- dewski 14y ago
  The author is talking about application/rate_limit_status which is also rate limited. The headers are great if you keep track of them from the response on your other calls, but if you want to see your rate limit status across all endpoints you can use: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/application/rate_limit_status https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/application/rate_li...
tectonic 14y ago
I'm sad to see the Twitter ecosystem collapsing. There are a couple of projects that I'd like to do involving Twitter, but I've backburnered them because it doesn't seem like a safe place to play.
lancewiggs 14y ago
Once again I'm just sad to see the continued erosion from the awesomeness that was Twitter. Twitter are killing off the good and magnifying the bad, all in the pursuit of goals that seem to be forcing a continuous decrease in the quality of end user experiences. The dumbest thing about this is that monetizing Twitter is trivial, without changing anything else. Just put occassional and obvious ads in our streams, and charge us to upgrade to see an ad-free steam.
- rdtsc 14y ago
  > from the awesomeness that was Twitter. But was the awesomeness before?
- xnxn 14y ago
  That doesn't sound trivial to me. Many would just use a client/extension that doesn't render said obvious ads. On the other hand, that is the status quo of the web (cf. AdBlock) and it mostly works.
  - Retric 14y ago
    I suspect if they made it a terms of service violation to block adds they could fairly effectively police smartphone apps. If nothing else it would be interesting to see them try. I am also of the opinion that a vary cheap add blocking option say 1$/month would prevent most people from jumping though many hoops for add-block software.
    - BlackJack 14y ago
      I agree with what you're saying, but you really don't have to "jump through hoops" to get ad-block software. It takes about 30 seconds to install an ad-blocking extension. I think the better argument is that most people don't know/care for ad-blocking software. I think AdBlock and its alternatives are prevalent in the tech community, but we're just a small part of total users.
      - phillmv 14y ago
NZ_Matt 14y ago
It's a shame that Twitter themselves don't seem to be doing anything to clean up the spam. I use to enjoy following twitter during sporting events but these days every trending topic is immediately swamped by automated spammers.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
It's feeling more and more like the people at the top of Twitter have lost the thread. At one point I thought there mission was to "Know what everyone in the world is thinking right now". Obviously useful, obviously valuable. Instead....well, I don't really know where they're going, and I don't think they do either.
- ihuman 14y ago
  "How can we make money off of what everyone in the world is thinking right now?"
shocks 14y ago
I dislike this new trend of linking to 'meme' like images within a blog post. It really detracts from the post and gives it a childish feel. I clicked those links expecting hard evidence about Twitter's bad API, instead I get irritating comics and stop signs. No thanks.
- itafroma 14y ago
  What gets me is that they aren't even re-hosted: they're hotlinks to other websites' imagery. Besides being incredibly lazy, leaching off of other people's bandwidth without giving them credit or placing the imagery in their original context by linking to the pages they appear on is just a low move.
  - sidawson 14y ago
    [author here] sigh Yeah, you're both right. I'll move the images local. Not intending to leach. Just trying to lighten up an otherwise kinda depressing post. Seeing four years of work come crashing down. As pg says, running a startup is like being repeatedly hit in the face.
    - itafroma 14y ago
      Thanks, I appreciate it: I'm just not a fan of people not getting the credit for or benefits of their creative works. While I don't have an opinion on the use of the images, I can definitely understand where you're coming from and what you were trying to do.
  - hcho 14y ago
    Leeching bandwidth? Really? This is not 1999 anymore, no one cares if their images are hot linked anymore. Be ready to be surprised, people found ways of making money from hot linked images.
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      In 2012, I replaced an often-hotlinked image with a picture of something gross, just on principle. Be ready to be surprised, the next link to a meme you click could be a gore-fest.
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
My faith in this post continually diminished as I clicked to links I thought contained relevant facts. Instead, they were just image macros. They could easily have been embedded direct, for what little value they offer. As it stands, it's just frustrating and really poor writing.
- sidawson 14y ago
  [author here] The post was intended to be stand alone commentary Not a bulletproof thesis. All I'm saying is my opinions etc after a long stressful week. Ignore the links, they're just there to lighten the story.
  - GhotiFish 14y ago
    Ok, that's fine. You want to lighten the mood. but personally, I recommend against fart jokes during a eulogy.
    - sidawson 14y ago
      The images are gone now. As per recommendations by other hn users above. The only links remaining are to directly pertinent or explanatory information.
    - sidawson 14y ago
      And while this doesn't dispute your opinion as a general rule, there is always an amusing exception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCouCYjYUA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCouCYjYUA (death doesn't have to be a morbid depressing thing, despite the tendency in the west to view it as such)
webwielder 14y ago
Almost every single feature of Twitter (including its logo!) was created by third party devs or users. Not surprising that when the API is severely restricted, the fun stops.
- itafroma 14y ago
  This is misleading-to-false, particularly regarding the logo. The logo was created by Simon Oxley. It's misleading because while Oxley is a Twitter user, he didn't create it for Twitter: he created as stock imagery, and Twitter purchased the rights to use the image via iStockphoto: http://www.wired.com/business/2009/03/twitter-designe/ http://www.wired.com/business/2009/03/twitter-designe/ It gets into false territory because subsequent versions of the logo were developed by designers either Twitter employed or contracted with. Even if you're talking about the "T" logo variant, it's also not true: the "T" logo was simply the "T" from Twitter's original wordmark, which was simply the Pico Alphabet font designed in 2001 by a Japanese design firm, Maniacker's Design: http://www2.wind.ne.jp/maniackers/pico.html http://www2.wind.ne.jp/maniackers/pico.html
  - protomyth 14y ago
    buying doesn't equal creation, so webwielder would seem to be correct. Derived versions of the logo are new creations, see all the arguments or derived works and software licensing. Also, "original artwork" and "simply the Pico Alphabet font designed..." doesn't match either. To go for functionality, the hashtag and retweet were developed by users not Twitter.
    - itafroma 14y ago
      The sense I meant "original wordmark" (not artwork) was that it was the first wordmark, not that it was novel. It was not created by a Twitter user or dev: it's just the name "Twitter" in the Pico font, which predates Twitter by several years. Moreover, it's misleading to claim the bird logo was created by third-party Twitter users (or devs): the fact that Simon Oxley has an account on Twitter played no part in the acquisition of the rights to use his work. They purchased the rights to use stock imagery. That is to say, its association with Twitter is due to Twitter buying the rights to the image and using it in their branding, not due to Oxley's involvement in the Twitter community or his offering it up as a community take on Twitter branding (which he did not). It's not in the same category as borrowing from or being inspired by the Twitter community as was the case with hashtags and retweets. The subsequent logos were created by internal Twitter designers or contractors. While I'm sure they are Twitter users, they are definitely not third party Twitter users and their usage of Twitter is incidental to their design work.
throwaway420 14y ago
Bad companies start getting really obsessive about being the only ones who end up profiting through their platform. They view another company getting traffic and making even a little money through their platform in the same backwards way that music executives consider pirated albums to be lost sales. They always end up lashing out at the wrong people - in this case smart developers who are giving them free promotion and creating value for their users. It's sad because Twitter had by far the best platform to build innovative software off of, but now I wouldn't touch Twitter's API with a 10 foot pole. There's too much risk that I'll spend lots of time putting something together and then getting shut down. The worst part about it is that spammers still easily use the Twitter API but legitimate software gets rate limited or shut down. It's really sad given the potential that Twitter had.
egypturnash 14y ago
I'm looking at the features and the future features this app has and wondering who the heck it's for. I've never gotten DM spam, I've never had to think about using a machine to unfollow junk accounts. I use Twitter to talk to some of my friends, share things I think are cool links, follow a few people whose work I admire, and occasionally tweet links to my own work. I don't follow back everyone who follows me; I basically regard Twitter as a sort of IRC channel where I get to choose who's in it. How do people who actually need this kind of tool use Twitter?
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Marketers, and people building an account for their business. Follow anyone who looks like they might be interested in what you offer, remove the spammers (TwitCleaner's main use for me), and unfollow people who don't follow back after some time has passed. You can build a Twitter account with real followers pretty quickly that way.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
mickaelkel 14y ago
There is also a "Hitler : The fall meme" about Twitter API restrictions. Based on a true story.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1LnLH1N7ow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1LnLH1N7ow
- lukehorvat 14y ago
  No.
stuartmemo 14y ago
It's not fun anymore for developers. Of course it isn't, but do normal users care? I can't say I've enjoyed using twitter any less since they introduced the API limit.
- protomyth 14y ago
  I cannot as a user say that I've seen anything cool added, plus I've watched tweetdeck have things removed with no other company able to replace it.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  Echofon for OSX is no longer functional since API 1.0 was deprecated. I've moved to another native client, but as a user who likes to see multiple avenues for engineers to subsist (i.e. not just working for bigco), it's saddening to see.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  I can say I've all but stopped using twitter altogether since their purchase/bastardization of tweetdeck. That client was nearly perfect.. multiple networks support, persistent searches... Twitter is not important enough for me to have to run a separate application for it.
OGinparadise 14y ago
Twitter is trying to go public and everyone holding shares is thinking of the possible riches. After that, they can leave to start their own thing, stay or possibly retire. What we/others say is a distant second. Right now they need to show growing revenues and that's it.
moocow01 14y ago
It seems pretty obvious that Twitter is trying to become a business and these alienating changes are part of the strategy but the unfortunate part is that they seemingly have picked the completely wrong strategy around what their business should be. Twitter really from a tech prospective is a protocol and it seemed that Twitter as a business was in line with what they were providing. Twitter.com acted as the centralized hub and the developers were invited to build upon and enrich the Twitter protocol. The goal was the more tweets and users the better no matter where they were coming from. Then they realized they need to start making money. It seems that from the business folks the reaction has been to strong arm users back to using Twitter controlled products with the assumption that they can start to serve ads. I don't blame them necessarily in that this is the standard business model for a social network but I think it will fail specifically for Twitter. In my opinion advertising will cannabalize their business - they should be looking to sell analytics and insights - thats where their value is. Yes its harder, less proven but they are just destroying themselves with their current strategy. Im sure nobody wants to see ads on Twitter and I wouldn't be surprised if nobody really wants to serve ads in that Twitter is exceptionally noisy and the functionality is very streamlined. On the other hand the value of real-time trends or the licensing to do so is exceptionally valuable to just about every company. Perhaps its not as easy of a business model as ads but at least its seemingly more scalable with their ecosystem.
- kalleboo 14y ago
  To me it seems like the larger problem is that Twitter doesn't just have to be profitable. They also have to justify their $9 billion valuation. Which I suspect will be impossible.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  On the other hand the value of real-time trends or the licensing to do so is exceptionally valuable to just about every company. Perhaps its not as easy of a business model as ads but at least its seemingly more scalable with their ecosystem. Maybe there is no serious money on that type of business model. Remember, most employees, investors and execs are trying to dump Twitter to investors, who cares what happens 2-3 years from now? The revenue needs to be shown now, ideally before advertisers get to see any hard stats on effectiveness. Facebook has been adding more ads, Google is virtually all ads so why not Twitter. Facebook will tire people with ads, Twitter too, Google will lose their reputation little by little considering that fairness is the core of it's business. But many will have cashed out and others will hold the bag
fencepost 14y ago
The only question I'd have is whether Twitter would be interested in purchasing it to run themselves as a paid premium service.
TheZenPsycho 14y ago
What I find frustrating is that twitter has ignored /really obvious/ opportunities to monetize in a natural way, in favour of this strategy that involves backtracking on the things that makes twitter /twitter/. Opportunities that I see: -- Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. Remember Ashton Kutcher's race to be the first twitter user with 1 million followers? Yeah. Having that many followers is valuable to the person with the followers, and caused actual strain on twitter's infrastructure. Why didn't they charge money for that? -- Charge third party developers for increased API capacity. It's obvious that this is a pain point. Why not just provide the option to pay to remove this pain point? Maybe they are planning to? who knows -- Charge users for special account abilities- like, perhaps, many of the features offered by tweet deck. And yet we have them pursuing this artificial advertising strategy. sigh. I can only think that the strategy they are pursuing is that they see twitter as a passive medium for celebrities to transmit messages to their fans. Like it's a text based TV, that they can run ads next to. Perhaps they have the user demographics to back this up. Us weirdo geeks that use it as a a many-to-many communications medium are the vast minority.
- nashadelic 14y ago
  > Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. You can't. Servies like these grow because of celebrities and their fans. Taxing the celebs will stop their own growth. Also, there are lots of would-be celebs who don't make a lot of money and are trying to use twitter to get the word out there. > Charge third party developers for increased API capacity. For the same reason as above, you can't. A lot of people come on facebook and stay there because of apps, charging devs for API access will kill innovation. Also, if something is popular and growing, taxing it will be bad for both the users and the dev if the dev can't pay. Also keep in mind that most popular apps may not have a monetization strategy yet. > Charge users for special account abilities- like, perhaps, many of the features offered by tweet deck. This is a good approach and is the LinkedIn model. I'm sure they're thinking of doing this with talk of 'lightweight analytics' etc so long as they don't make the paid users too powerful and disenfranchise existing users.
  - 14y ago
zaidf 14y ago
I've suggested before that we should explore an independant organization that rates companies and their treatment of devs who use their API. If a company has a history of constantly trimming usage limits, it should be documented. At some threshold, recommendations could be made to avoid or be weary of certain APIs. We are returning back to the 90s where API access came from BD deals and the rest of us did dirty parsing to make things work. For a while we got the illusion those days may be gone. And why not, it sure felt like that. But now we are getting to a stage it's almost worse for services to have public or free APIs at all.
brownbat 14y ago
Do social networks tend to cannibalize themselves over time? Initially, growth is the most important part of a social network, so it makes sense to prioritize usability. Over time, pressures towards monetization mount (either internally or externally, among spammers). Monetization tends to degrade the user experience, creating opportunities for new entrants. Network effects can keep you going, but these aren't Ma Bell's network effects. Users can install competing social apps next to each other using almost no time and less money. They get to keep the more established network as a fallback, then spend most of their time using the one with better features or more "exclusivity." Even if this doesn't lubricate transitions enough for established users, network effects are basically nonexistent among new cohorts (read: the young, emerging international markets). If this is correct, it would explain why no one under 20 actually uses Facebook (or email, for the matter), and why every move from Twitter smacks of desperation. So, I don't know, all hail snapchat? (At least until something displaces that in five years...)
- Qantourisc 14y ago
  They saying goes that if you are not paying you are the product (or will become eventually). Wonder how much people are willing to pay? And what it would cost? But personally I fear the biggest road-bump will the paying itself.
shurcooL 14y ago
Speaking of twitter API, is there any efficient way of getting just the single latest tweet from all the users someone follows?
- sidawson 14y ago
  Ha! No. Off hand, it'd require batching the users into groups of 100 and using an API call (/users/lookup) for each group. That gives you a user object each (which you don't care about), but also the latest tweet. The limit is 180/15 mins, ie a max of 18k in any 15 minute window.
  - shurcooL 14y ago
    Thanks! That beats my first naive attempt, which was an API call (/statuses/user_timeline/<id>.json?count=1) per user. Hmm, I just noticed there was also (now deprecated) GET statuses/friends which did what I want. It is deprecated in favour of your suggestion.
rschmitty 14y ago
TFA is about the API, but when I read the title prior to clicking my immediate reaction was "it was never fun" I'm in my 30s so I don't feel that "get off my lawn" old, but I just never "got it" I guess. Any tech person I want to follow normally has a blog because you are limited to the character limit. I wish twitter had built in filters, what drove me away was all the pictures, the "lolz", and food/drink shots in exchange for a few tech links that aren't on the persons blog and if I were not following them I might not have known. Twitter feels like reddit to me while RSS is akin to HN. HN is super focused, and while some funny OT stories make it to the front page, for the most part it is solid tech news. reddit you get _everything_ If twitter could somehow provide "channels" or something like professional/personal I'd really see the value. Not everyone is going to hashtag their tech only stuff or personal only stuff Am I doing it wrong?
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  > TFA is about the API, but when I read the title prior to clicking my immediate reaction was "it was never fun" Whoever reverts all titles changed this one from the useful and descriptive title I submitted it with. This was the original: > TwitCleaner shutting down due to API changes
- dasil003 14y ago
  I'm the same demographic and also never really got into Twitter, but I definitely see the appeal. Comparing Twitter to RSS is definitely way off as RSS has really nothing to do with social, and Twitter has everything to do with social. HN/Reddit, by comparison, are almost exactly the same thing with just different community standards. Twitter is really about a streamlined and open conversation. It's a more stripped-down social experience compared to Facebook or Tumblr or whatever other social networks came before, but yet it captures the essence of online interaction in an elegantly minimalist fashion. I think this leads some people to find it utterly vapid because online interaction is simply not the same as in-person, and Twitter exacerbates these characteristics by lowering the time and location requirements down to near zero, so you can participate anywhere, anytime, on any device without ever having to take more than a minute because you're limited to 140 characters anyway. There is definitely a purity and beauty to it, but it always gives me the sense that I'm wasting my time.
onlyup 14y ago
I'm not a fan of Twitter and never have been but as you concluded at the end of your post: "Never play football when someone else owns the field." Was it making you money?

172 points by mkr-hn 14y ago

Not surprised at all. One could argue it was the API that attracted so many people to Twitter in the first place. It seemed really smart to me at first to create such a great ecosystem, but maybe there's more behind that scenes that I don't know about? Either way it's sad to see this service go. The guy seems nice and provided a good service, but clearly he's not going to spend a bunch of his own time and money if it's not rewarding anymore.

sbarre 14y ago

Could this be rebuilt for, or ported to, app.net? Seems like a good place for the author to continue what is obviously a project he cares about.

orn 14y ago
Exactly what I was thinking, thumbs up
sdqali 14y ago
Does App.net as a platform need an application with these capabilities? I would think that App.net has far less spam.
sidawson 14y ago
It would depend on app.net's data policies - how much (and how fast) we could get information out of them. Of course, they own the field, so they could change the rules at any time, thus (once again) killing the project. From a technical basis, 90% of the effort was building a robust system atop Twitter's. The actual core behavioural categorisation engine was relatively trivial. Ie, it would require a major rebuild, without lessening the risks at all.

btipling 14y ago

You don't have to make calls to get the rate limit left, it comes in the API response HTTP header. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting Look for these headers: X-FeatureRateLimit-Limit X-FeatureRateLimit-Remaining X-FeatureRateLimit-Reset

dewski 14y ago
The author is talking about application/rate_limit_status which is also rate limited. The headers are great if you keep track of them from the response on your other calls, but if you want to see your rate limit status across all endpoints you can use: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/application/rate_limit_status https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/application/rate_li...

tectonic 14y ago

I'm sad to see the Twitter ecosystem collapsing. There are a couple of projects that I'd like to do involving Twitter, but I've backburnered them because it doesn't seem like a safe place to play.

lancewiggs 14y ago

Once again I'm just sad to see the continued erosion from the awesomeness that was Twitter. Twitter are killing off the good and magnifying the bad, all in the pursuit of goals that seem to be forcing a continuous decrease in the quality of end user experiences. The dumbest thing about this is that monetizing Twitter is trivial, without changing anything else. Just put occassional and obvious ads in our streams, and charge us to upgrade to see an ad-free steam.

rdtsc 14y ago
> from the awesomeness that was Twitter. But was the awesomeness before?
xnxn 14y ago
That doesn't sound trivial to me. Many would just use a client/extension that doesn't render said obvious ads. On the other hand, that is the status quo of the web (cf. AdBlock) and it mostly works.
- Retric 14y ago
  I suspect if they made it a terms of service violation to block adds they could fairly effectively police smartphone apps. If nothing else it would be interesting to see them try. I am also of the opinion that a vary cheap add blocking option say 1$/month would prevent most people from jumping though many hoops for add-block software.
  - BlackJack 14y ago
    I agree with what you're saying, but you really don't have to "jump through hoops" to get ad-block software. It takes about 30 seconds to install an ad-blocking extension. I think the better argument is that most people don't know/care for ad-blocking software. I think AdBlock and its alternatives are prevalent in the tech community, but we're just a small part of total users.
    - phillmv 14y ago

NZ_Matt 14y ago

It's a shame that Twitter themselves don't seem to be doing anything to clean up the spam. I use to enjoy following twitter during sporting events but these days every trending topic is immediately swamped by automated spammers.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

It's feeling more and more like the people at the top of Twitter have lost the thread. At one point I thought there mission was to "Know what everyone in the world is thinking right now". Obviously useful, obviously valuable. Instead....well, I don't really know where they're going, and I don't think they do either.

ihuman 14y ago
"How can we make money off of what everyone in the world is thinking right now?"

shocks 14y ago

I dislike this new trend of linking to 'meme' like images within a blog post. It really detracts from the post and gives it a childish feel. I clicked those links expecting hard evidence about Twitter's bad API, instead I get irritating comics and stop signs. No thanks.

itafroma 14y ago
What gets me is that they aren't even re-hosted: they're hotlinks to other websites' imagery. Besides being incredibly lazy, leaching off of other people's bandwidth without giving them credit or placing the imagery in their original context by linking to the pages they appear on is just a low move.
- sidawson 14y ago
  [author here] sigh Yeah, you're both right. I'll move the images local. Not intending to leach. Just trying to lighten up an otherwise kinda depressing post. Seeing four years of work come crashing down. As pg says, running a startup is like being repeatedly hit in the face.
  - itafroma 14y ago
    Thanks, I appreciate it: I'm just not a fan of people not getting the credit for or benefits of their creative works. While I don't have an opinion on the use of the images, I can definitely understand where you're coming from and what you were trying to do.
- hcho 14y ago
  Leeching bandwidth? Really? This is not 1999 anymore, no one cares if their images are hot linked anymore. Be ready to be surprised, people found ways of making money from hot linked images.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    In 2012, I replaced an often-hotlinked image with a picture of something gross, just on principle. Be ready to be surprised, the next link to a meme you click could be a gore-fest.

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

My faith in this post continually diminished as I clicked to links I thought contained relevant facts. Instead, they were just image macros. They could easily have been embedded direct, for what little value they offer. As it stands, it's just frustrating and really poor writing.

sidawson 14y ago
[author here] The post was intended to be stand alone commentary Not a bulletproof thesis. All I'm saying is my opinions etc after a long stressful week. Ignore the links, they're just there to lighten the story.
- GhotiFish 14y ago
  Ok, that's fine. You want to lighten the mood. but personally, I recommend against fart jokes during a eulogy.
  - sidawson 14y ago
    The images are gone now. As per recommendations by other hn users above. The only links remaining are to directly pertinent or explanatory information.
  - sidawson 14y ago
    And while this doesn't dispute your opinion as a general rule, there is always an amusing exception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCouCYjYUA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCouCYjYUA (death doesn't have to be a morbid depressing thing, despite the tendency in the west to view it as such)

webwielder 14y ago

Almost every single feature of Twitter (including its logo!) was created by third party devs or users. Not surprising that when the API is severely restricted, the fun stops.

itafroma 14y ago
This is misleading-to-false, particularly regarding the logo. The logo was created by Simon Oxley. It's misleading because while Oxley is a Twitter user, he didn't create it for Twitter: he created as stock imagery, and Twitter purchased the rights to use the image via iStockphoto: http://www.wired.com/business/2009/03/twitter-designe/ http://www.wired.com/business/2009/03/twitter-designe/ It gets into false territory because subsequent versions of the logo were developed by designers either Twitter employed or contracted with. Even if you're talking about the "T" logo variant, it's also not true: the "T" logo was simply the "T" from Twitter's original wordmark, which was simply the Pico Alphabet font designed in 2001 by a Japanese design firm, Maniacker's Design: http://www2.wind.ne.jp/maniackers/pico.html http://www2.wind.ne.jp/maniackers/pico.html
- protomyth 14y ago
  buying doesn't equal creation, so webwielder would seem to be correct. Derived versions of the logo are new creations, see all the arguments or derived works and software licensing. Also, "original artwork" and "simply the Pico Alphabet font designed..." doesn't match either. To go for functionality, the hashtag and retweet were developed by users not Twitter.
  - itafroma 14y ago
    The sense I meant "original wordmark" (not artwork) was that it was the first wordmark, not that it was novel. It was not created by a Twitter user or dev: it's just the name "Twitter" in the Pico font, which predates Twitter by several years. Moreover, it's misleading to claim the bird logo was created by third-party Twitter users (or devs): the fact that Simon Oxley has an account on Twitter played no part in the acquisition of the rights to use his work. They purchased the rights to use stock imagery. That is to say, its association with Twitter is due to Twitter buying the rights to the image and using it in their branding, not due to Oxley's involvement in the Twitter community or his offering it up as a community take on Twitter branding (which he did not). It's not in the same category as borrowing from or being inspired by the Twitter community as was the case with hashtags and retweets. The subsequent logos were created by internal Twitter designers or contractors. While I'm sure they are Twitter users, they are definitely not third party Twitter users and their usage of Twitter is incidental to their design work.

throwaway420 14y ago

Bad companies start getting really obsessive about being the only ones who end up profiting through their platform. They view another company getting traffic and making even a little money through their platform in the same backwards way that music executives consider pirated albums to be lost sales. They always end up lashing out at the wrong people - in this case smart developers who are giving them free promotion and creating value for their users. It's sad because Twitter had by far the best platform to build innovative software off of, but now I wouldn't touch Twitter's API with a 10 foot pole. There's too much risk that I'll spend lots of time putting something together and then getting shut down. The worst part about it is that spammers still easily use the Twitter API but legitimate software gets rate limited or shut down. It's really sad given the potential that Twitter had.

egypturnash 14y ago

I'm looking at the features and the future features this app has and wondering who the heck it's for. I've never gotten DM spam, I've never had to think about using a machine to unfollow junk accounts. I use Twitter to talk to some of my friends, share things I think are cool links, follow a few people whose work I admire, and occasionally tweet links to my own work. I don't follow back everyone who follows me; I basically regard Twitter as a sort of IRC channel where I get to choose who's in it. How do people who actually need this kind of tool use Twitter?

mkr-hn 14y ago
Marketers, and people building an account for their business. Follow anyone who looks like they might be interested in what you offer, remove the spammers (TwitCleaner's main use for me), and unfollow people who don't follow back after some time has passed. You can build a Twitter account with real followers pretty quickly that way.
- deleted 14y ago
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mickaelkel 14y ago

There is also a "Hitler : The fall meme" about Twitter API restrictions. Based on a true story.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1LnLH1N7ow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1LnLH1N7ow

lukehorvat 14y ago
No.

stuartmemo 14y ago

It's not fun anymore for developers. Of course it isn't, but do normal users care? I can't say I've enjoyed using twitter any less since they introduced the API limit.

protomyth 14y ago
I cannot as a user say that I've seen anything cool added, plus I've watched tweetdeck have things removed with no other company able to replace it.
hkmurakami 14y ago
Echofon for OSX is no longer functional since API 1.0 was deprecated. I've moved to another native client, but as a user who likes to see multiple avenues for engineers to subsist (i.e. not just working for bigco), it's saddening to see.
Karunamon 14y ago
I can say I've all but stopped using twitter altogether since their purchase/bastardization of tweetdeck. That client was nearly perfect.. multiple networks support, persistent searches... Twitter is not important enough for me to have to run a separate application for it.

OGinparadise 14y ago

Twitter is trying to go public and everyone holding shares is thinking of the possible riches. After that, they can leave to start their own thing, stay or possibly retire. What we/others say is a distant second. Right now they need to show growing revenues and that's it.

moocow01 14y ago

It seems pretty obvious that Twitter is trying to become a business and these alienating changes are part of the strategy but the unfortunate part is that they seemingly have picked the completely wrong strategy around what their business should be. Twitter really from a tech prospective is a protocol and it seemed that Twitter as a business was in line with what they were providing. Twitter.com acted as the centralized hub and the developers were invited to build upon and enrich the Twitter protocol. The goal was the more tweets and users the better no matter where they were coming from. Then they realized they need to start making money. It seems that from the business folks the reaction has been to strong arm users back to using Twitter controlled products with the assumption that they can start to serve ads. I don't blame them necessarily in that this is the standard business model for a social network but I think it will fail specifically for Twitter. In my opinion advertising will cannabalize their business - they should be looking to sell analytics and insights - thats where their value is. Yes its harder, less proven but they are just destroying themselves with their current strategy. Im sure nobody wants to see ads on Twitter and I wouldn't be surprised if nobody really wants to serve ads in that Twitter is exceptionally noisy and the functionality is very streamlined. On the other hand the value of real-time trends or the licensing to do so is exceptionally valuable to just about every company. Perhaps its not as easy of a business model as ads but at least its seemingly more scalable with their ecosystem.

kalleboo 14y ago
To me it seems like the larger problem is that Twitter doesn't just have to be profitable. They also have to justify their $9 billion valuation. Which I suspect will be impossible.
OGinparadise 14y ago
On the other hand the value of real-time trends or the licensing to do so is exceptionally valuable to just about every company. Perhaps its not as easy of a business model as ads but at least its seemingly more scalable with their ecosystem. Maybe there is no serious money on that type of business model. Remember, most employees, investors and execs are trying to dump Twitter to investors, who cares what happens 2-3 years from now? The revenue needs to be shown now, ideally before advertisers get to see any hard stats on effectiveness. Facebook has been adding more ads, Google is virtually all ads so why not Twitter. Facebook will tire people with ads, Twitter too, Google will lose their reputation little by little considering that fairness is the core of it's business. But many will have cashed out and others will hold the bag

fencepost 14y ago

The only question I'd have is whether Twitter would be interested in purchasing it to run themselves as a paid premium service.

TheZenPsycho 14y ago

What I find frustrating is that twitter has ignored /really obvious/ opportunities to monetize in a natural way, in favour of this strategy that involves backtracking on the things that makes twitter /twitter/. Opportunities that I see: -- Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. Remember Ashton Kutcher's race to be the first twitter user with 1 million followers? Yeah. Having that many followers is valuable to the person with the followers, and caused actual strain on twitter's infrastructure. Why didn't they charge money for that? -- Charge third party developers for increased API capacity. It's obvious that this is a pain point. Why not just provide the option to pay to remove this pain point? Maybe they are planning to? who knows -- Charge users for special account abilities- like, perhaps, many of the features offered by tweet deck. And yet we have them pursuing this artificial advertising strategy. sigh. I can only think that the strategy they are pursuing is that they see twitter as a passive medium for celebrities to transmit messages to their fans. Like it's a text based TV, that they can run ads next to. Perhaps they have the user demographics to back this up. Us weirdo geeks that use it as a a many-to-many communications medium are the vast minority.

nashadelic 14y ago
> Charge celebrities and companies for the capability of having huge numbers of followers. You can't. Servies like these grow because of celebrities and their fans. Taxing the celebs will stop their own growth. Also, there are lots of would-be celebs who don't make a lot of money and are trying to use twitter to get the word out there. > Charge third party developers for increased API capacity. For the same reason as above, you can't. A lot of people come on facebook and stay there because of apps, charging devs for API access will kill innovation. Also, if something is popular and growing, taxing it will be bad for both the users and the dev if the dev can't pay. Also keep in mind that most popular apps may not have a monetization strategy yet. > Charge users for special account abilities- like, perhaps, many of the features offered by tweet deck. This is a good approach and is the LinkedIn model. I'm sure they're thinking of doing this with talk of 'lightweight analytics' etc so long as they don't make the paid users too powerful and disenfranchise existing users.
- 14y ago

zaidf 14y ago

I've suggested before that we should explore an independant organization that rates companies and their treatment of devs who use their API. If a company has a history of constantly trimming usage limits, it should be documented. At some threshold, recommendations could be made to avoid or be weary of certain APIs. We are returning back to the 90s where API access came from BD deals and the rest of us did dirty parsing to make things work. For a while we got the illusion those days may be gone. And why not, it sure felt like that. But now we are getting to a stage it's almost worse for services to have public or free APIs at all.

brownbat 14y ago

Do social networks tend to cannibalize themselves over time? Initially, growth is the most important part of a social network, so it makes sense to prioritize usability. Over time, pressures towards monetization mount (either internally or externally, among spammers). Monetization tends to degrade the user experience, creating opportunities for new entrants. Network effects can keep you going, but these aren't Ma Bell's network effects. Users can install competing social apps next to each other using almost no time and less money. They get to keep the more established network as a fallback, then spend most of their time using the one with better features or more "exclusivity." Even if this doesn't lubricate transitions enough for established users, network effects are basically nonexistent among new cohorts (read: the young, emerging international markets). If this is correct, it would explain why no one under 20 actually uses Facebook (or email, for the matter), and why every move from Twitter smacks of desperation. So, I don't know, all hail snapchat? (At least until something displaces that in five years...)

Qantourisc 14y ago
They saying goes that if you are not paying you are the product (or will become eventually). Wonder how much people are willing to pay? And what it would cost? But personally I fear the biggest road-bump will the paying itself.

shurcooL 14y ago

Speaking of twitter API, is there any efficient way of getting just the single latest tweet from all the users someone follows?

sidawson 14y ago
Ha! No. Off hand, it'd require batching the users into groups of 100 and using an API call (/users/lookup) for each group. That gives you a user object each (which you don't care about), but also the latest tweet. The limit is 180/15 mins, ie a max of 18k in any 15 minute window.
- shurcooL 14y ago
  Thanks! That beats my first naive attempt, which was an API call (/statuses/user_timeline/<id>.json?count=1) per user. Hmm, I just noticed there was also (now deprecated) GET statuses/friends which did what I want. It is deprecated in favour of your suggestion.

rschmitty 14y ago

TFA is about the API, but when I read the title prior to clicking my immediate reaction was "it was never fun" I'm in my 30s so I don't feel that "get off my lawn" old, but I just never "got it" I guess. Any tech person I want to follow normally has a blog because you are limited to the character limit. I wish twitter had built in filters, what drove me away was all the pictures, the "lolz", and food/drink shots in exchange for a few tech links that aren't on the persons blog and if I were not following them I might not have known. Twitter feels like reddit to me while RSS is akin to HN. HN is super focused, and while some funny OT stories make it to the front page, for the most part it is solid tech news. reddit you get _everything_ If twitter could somehow provide "channels" or something like professional/personal I'd really see the value. Not everyone is going to hashtag their tech only stuff or personal only stuff Am I doing it wrong?

mkr-hn 14y ago
> TFA is about the API, but when I read the title prior to clicking my immediate reaction was "it was never fun" Whoever reverts all titles changed this one from the useful and descriptive title I submitted it with. This was the original: > TwitCleaner shutting down due to API changes
dasil003 14y ago
I'm the same demographic and also never really got into Twitter, but I definitely see the appeal. Comparing Twitter to RSS is definitely way off as RSS has really nothing to do with social, and Twitter has everything to do with social. HN/Reddit, by comparison, are almost exactly the same thing with just different community standards. Twitter is really about a streamlined and open conversation. It's a more stripped-down social experience compared to Facebook or Tumblr or whatever other social networks came before, but yet it captures the essence of online interaction in an elegantly minimalist fashion. I think this leads some people to find it utterly vapid because online interaction is simply not the same as in-person, and Twitter exacerbates these characteristics by lowering the time and location requirements down to near zero, so you can participate anywhere, anytime, on any device without ever having to take more than a minute because you're limited to 140 characters anyway. There is definitely a purity and beauty to it, but it always gives me the sense that I'm wasting my time.

onlyup 14y ago

I'm not a fan of Twitter and never have been but as you concluded at the end of your post: "Never play football when someone else owns the field." Was it making you money?