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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#71

Post by bink »

kemayo wrote: post #48

Speaking as someone who had mostly been using the first party twitter app in recent years and so wouldn't have been impacted by this even if I was still actively using twitter, this seems pretty poorly done by Musk. Shutting down third party clients? It's arguably a valid decision. They presumably want to consolidate the users into directly controlled clients, where they can be advertised to and can have premium subs…

Very true. But announcing it ahead of time and providing time for a wind down also would've required a comms team.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#72

Post by yamtaddle »

bradgessler wrote: post #16
jdoss wrote: post #6

The question I have with this move is why didn't Twitter just force advertising as part of their API for third party clients? Just change the TOS for using the API so if they didn't show advertising they would be cut off. What am I missing?

The list of unforced errors is insane. Remember when pg was banned from Twitter for mentioning that he had a link to Mastodon on his website? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul...

I followed some of that and it was especially funny that he had just been defending Musk and posting some "well he's a super-genius—you know, like all us rich SV types—so we should give him the benefit of the doubt" sort of stuff, right before that happened.

The whole thing was truly beautiful. Overall, Musk's acquisition has provided some excellent entertainment.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#74

Post by wholinator2 »

TuringTest wrote: post #39
MBCook wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Starting Feb 1st using a third part client will require Twitter Blue.” That’s all it would have taken. Probably would have made a huge increase in subscribers too. This is 100% a control move. He wants full control over how everyone experiences Twitter (not sure why). So this was pulled. Of course you can NEVER go back from this move.

That's what I thought as well. They need money badly, and they have an obvious way to get it - monetize the API so that third party clients can continue using Twitter while building a business on top of it. Yet instead of supporting the strong ecosystem they already have and nurturing a symbiotic relationship with it, they burn it all?

What are these 3 star comments I keep seeing? Bots? Is it the same kind of thing as when redditors comment "this" instead of just upvoting? It keeps cropping up with no explanation or context.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#75

Post by system16 »

jmann99999 wrote: post #31

I just don't see the replacement for Twitter as Mastodon -- which it seems the Tweetbot people are targeting. Twitter will likely file for bankruptcy later this year due to the debt burden. However, the replacement for Twitter won't be a Twitter "clone." Things will move on. I'm not smart enough to know what people will move on to... But they will move on.

I said the same thing even a few weeks ago, but the momentum for Mastodon is growing rapidly and it's really impressive to see, and Ivory is a very impressive client even in beta.

Almost everyone I followed on Twitter is using it now, and I actually prefer the experience. It's like Twitter but without all the bots/spam/hate, at least for now.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#76

Post by ericmay »

barnabee wrote: post #47

I don't think they realise the damage this change has done. I have been on board with or ambivalent about most of the changes. I don't care if there's less moderation, I think Twitter probably did have too many employees, and I like the idea of a paid account with fewer (preferably no) ads. I'd even have happily paid Twitter to continue using Tweetbot. But this has destroyed the trust and the user experience of many…

What's the saying? First they came for the moderation, but I didn't care because they weren't moderating me. Then they fired employees so as to not have to pay severance or whatever but I didn't care because I don't work at Twitter. Then they came for the API and there was noone left to speak for me...

Twitter and Elon have already done quite a bit of damage to the company, platform, and reputation. This is just a continued pattern, and it is disappointing.

-edit-

Just to be clear with the original comment I'm just giving OP a little bit of a hard time on a Friday :)

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#77

Post by hiidrew »

jmann99999 wrote: post #31

I just don't see the replacement for Twitter as Mastodon -- which it seems the Tweetbot people are targeting. Twitter will likely file for bankruptcy later this year due to the debt burden. However, the replacement for Twitter won't be a Twitter "clone." Things will move on. I'm not smart enough to know what people will move on to... But they will move on.

I wonder what happens after that?

40B acquisition to bankruptcy sounds brutal. I'm sure there's some nuanced financial way they can recover and continue but wow.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#78

Post by raverbashing »

karmelapple wrote: post #62
wstuartcl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also do not think Musk understands just who the primary userbase on many of these 3rd party apps were -- many of those pesky advertisers/brands that he seems to be both courting and at war with exclusively use api apps for tracking posting/responding and integrations.

Those aren't the same APIs that were turned off for third party clients though, correct?

Who knows? Probably someone who got fired on a previous round, that is.

Disabling APIs won't win you any friends

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#79

Post by jjulius »

throwaway092345 wrote: post #65
system16 wrote: post #46

Another short-sighted and bizarre move by a bizarre. fragile, little man. The number of users on third-party clients could not have been significant enough to justify this. At very least, the developers could have been given some notice or an ounce of respect about API access being phased out. Not to mention third-party client users are mostly power users who are responsible for a lot of the content on Twitter that t…

[flagged]

"Don't criticize if you can't do better," is never a good take.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#80

Post by tzs »

bink wrote: post #71
kemayo wrote: post #48

Speaking as someone who had mostly been using the first party twitter app in recent years and so wouldn't have been impacted by this even if I was still actively using twitter, this seems pretty poorly done by Musk. Shutting down third party clients? It's arguably a valid decision. They presumably want to consolidate the users into directly controlled clients, where they can be advertised to and can have premium subs…

Very true. But announcing it ahead of time and providing time for a wind down also would've required a comms team.

How would that require a comms team?

PS: let me clarify a bit. I'm not saying that Twitter should not have or does not need a comms team or that getting rid of them was not a stupid thing for Musk to do.

What I'm trying to say is that this latest stupid thing (not giving any warning about changing their app API rules so that app developers and users could have some time adjust) doesn't really have anything to do with the lack of a comms team. It's not one of the stupidities that naturally falls out of not having a comms team.

In this case all that was needed was for Musk when he decided to change this policy to (1) tell whoever he ordered to implement it to deploy it on $FUTURE_DATE, and (2) tweet that he'd ordered this change and it will go live on $FUTURE_DATE.

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