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Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

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Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#281

Post by dmitriid »

college_physics wrote: post #116

At some point I saw speculation that the idea is to turn twitter into some sort of super-app like wechat. If that is true then it makes sense to button down loose "ecosystem" thingies that were setup during a more innocent and hopeful era. This will probably destroy a whole bunch of use-cases and motivations for people and organizations to use twitter, but might retain enough of a core (mostly low-information) user b…

> At some point I saw speculation that the idea is to turn twitter into some sort of super-app like wechat. If that is true then it makes sense to button down loose "ecosystem" thingies that were setup during a more innocent and hopeful era.

What do you think WeChat is if not integration of hundreds of external apps and developers?

If you were really serious about turning Twitter into WeChat, you would:

- have an actual plan how to do it

- have this plan publicly available

- explain the changes to the APIs beforehand

- have the pricing info for the changes beforehand

- give developers a clear path of moving to this new wechat thingie

- give developers plenty of time to move to this new wechat thingie, work closely with them and figure out and iron out any issues

What Elon did:

- killed third-party ecosystem (Twitter wouldn't be twitter without third-party apps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34640515) with no warning and no path forward

- killed a huge third-party ecosystem [1] with a week's warning and no path forward

[1] Of course it's not just bots. Does he really think that news outlets, media outlets, celebrities etc. post to Twitter manually by hand?

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#282

Post by [deleted] »

college_physics wrote: post #248
Vespasian wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also regulators in on some of Twitters core markets (EU and US) are not to fond of ginormous Techconglomerates at the moment and might have a few words to say about that. In fact the EU recently passed laws to nip budding "market dominant companies" before they take out all of the competition and bundle lots of unrelated services. The political climate soured with regards to Big Tech and that's happening across party…

The perplexing thing is that all these headwinds are fairly well known and for some time (even though probably internalized more by participants in this particular forum). So this raises the question whether there was any rationality attached to the infamous $44bln purchase. One could hypothesise that it was just a random, discretionary action, made possible by an insane system that has lost any sense of value, purpo…

[deleted]

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#283

Post by naasking »

bruce343434 wrote: post #272
naasking wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the paper showing that Twitter activity slightly predicted stock movements was incredibly interesting and valuable to know. I'm sure there are plenty of other papers as well, like analyses of Arab spring?

link to the stock movement one?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18777...

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#286

Post by cdme »

gonzo41 wrote: post #213
cdme wrote: post #81

I'm still surprised that anyone expected the acquisition of Twitter by a billionaire with a long demonstrated lack of empathy, social grace or self awareness would go at all well. He started a fire in a movie theater and now wants to lock the doors and raise the price on whatever water and extinguishers are on hand.

Whilst I like the fire analogy a lot. it doesn't capture how much he's on the hook vs what we loose if twitter dies. I will loose...... can't really tell. Elon will have irreparable reputational damage done to him forever.

Yeah I suppose the intent was to speak to the outcome of his behavior and subsequent efforts to claw back revenue — it may not be a fire intentionally set, but he set it all the same.

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#287

Post by hvis »

b800h wrote: post #132
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your problem could be solved by providing read-only API for free - you don't need to write access to do academic research (unless you want to influence the discourse).

Providing a read-only API still costs Twitter money though. He's trying to make it profitable. Seems obvious that stuff like this would be cut.

Having free users also costs money. Same argument can be applied. And best of luck to Twitter with that approach.

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#288

Post by jstummbillig »

anigbrowl wrote: post #3

- announced at 10pm - basically a week to decide what to do with your dev project - No information to help you make that decision This seems like more management by manchild. I strongly suspect that Musk realized his promises of cutting down bots etc. were failing and that they either couldn't or wouldn't develop abuse detection, so he's decided to solve the problem by making it cost money, with the (perhaps desired)…

> This seems like more management by manchild.

"Manchilds" track record in this Game of Life is by and large a testament to how well he understands its rules. And, maybe, how silly they are.

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#289

Post by mastax »

ozim wrote: post #257
masklinn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's trying to make it profitable. Might have been smart to not make it unprofitable in the first place.

I think Twitter was never profitable to start with.

It was profitable from Q4 '17 on, with the exception of Q1-Q2 '20.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-incom...

Re: Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API

#290

Post by masklinn »

ozim wrote: post #257
masklinn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's trying to make it profitable. Might have been smart to not make it unprofitable in the first place.

I think Twitter was never profitable to start with.

Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019, took a deep dive in 2020, climbed way back up in 2021 though not quite to profitability.

However pretty much the entirety of their revenue stream was ads, and Musk started taking a big dump on that early 2022.

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