5 ms·

I disagree. The third party eco-system diluted the brand, restricted monetization potential, and left Twitter with little control over their user experience. L

• dublinben 11y ago
  >We need an open alternative to Twitter Like GNUSocial and Pumpio? What's your handle?
  • artichokeheart 11y ago
    I think pump.io is meant to be more like a G+ alternative. But you are right. Open sourced distributed alternatives exist if that's what you want all you need to do is join. GnuSocial, pump.io, Diaspora, RedMatrix, Friendica, Twister, BuddyCloud etc etc. Each has it's own community of users. Sure your close friends probably wont be there but were they on Twitter when you joined? From my own perspective zot (RedMatrix) should be the future. Whether the socialwg agrees is yet to be seen.Though I have a feeling zot will be the betamax to socialwg's eventual vhs
    • pjc50 11y ago
      I only joined twitter because someone I knew was on there. I'll join one of the decentralised alternatives when more than one person I already know mentions that they use it.
      • artichokeheart 11y ago
        That's great and it's entirely your choice. I have no problem communicating with strangers on the Internet.
  • UVB-76 11y ago
    Neither of these are true alternatives until they have a critical mass of users. Unfortunately Twitter has a near complete monopoly in the microblogging market.
• frostmatthew 11y ago
  > We need an open alternative to Twitter Like App.net?[1][2] It would seem you need much more than just being open and "letting third parties do the hard work of experimenting with user acquisition and engagement" to succeed in this space. [1] https://github.com/appdotnet/alpha https://github.com/appdotnet/alpha [2] https://alpha.app.net/ https://alpha.app.net/
• nkozyra 11y ago
  It was bad for Twitter's brand but good for Twitter's application, ecosystem and momentum. This is nothing new, and another tale of caution for people building companies that entirely rely on another company's good graces and policies.
• sp332 11y ago
  As a user, why would I want Twitter to have control over my experience? I'd rather use an app I like, or one I trust not to track the heck out of me.
  • UVB-76 11y ago
    Tighter control over the user experience doesn't necessarily benefit the end user, but Twitter don't care about your interests that much.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• mtabini 11y ago
  > Letting third parties do the hard work of experimenting with user acquisition and engagement, then buying up the best and turning their backs on the rest was a masterful move. It would have been if you assume that Twitter could thrive on its own. Since they have historically relied on third parties to push their product forward, and then cut them off at the knee, they should have been prepared for the inevitable stagnation that followed, and perhaps they weren't. The masterful move would have been to carefully augment the base functionality offered by Twitter while encouraging the third-party ecosystem to continue to grow and thrive. You can see, for example, Apple do this with iOS (albeit at times with a ham-fisted approach) by incorporating some—but by no means all—of the features that third parties come up with into the base OS. This encourages third parties to continue to participate in the ecosystem while gently nudging them towards innovating instead of stagnating, because that's the only way they will be able to compete with the “free” Apple-provided software and make money. Twitter was in the somewhat unfortunate position that it was born as a wide-open system that had little in the way of walls, leaving the new management with few options to gain more control over their product but to start restricting what could be done with it. Instead of recognizing the value of third-parties and commoditizing their complements, though, they went all-out and systematically alienated anyone who wanted to share in their good fortunes. They placed their focus on attracting celebrities and brands (remember when Ev was “excited” that Oprah was joining?) and attempted to create a friendly environment for the average consumer by tightly controlling the user experience. In itself, I don't think that this is a bad idea—Facebook has done it quite successfully, for example. Twitter's problem is simply that they are about to run out of innovation to acquire because there are no more small timers left who are willing and capable to take a risk on their platform and come up with some unexpected new feature that could later be integrated into product proper.
  • datashovel 11y ago
    Sorry I only have one up vote for this.