Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 49 posts

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#11

Post by Squanto »

simonsarris wrote: post #2

Maybe there's a trend here, but maybe its just me being short-sighted. I'll type out what I'm thinking. I think that the uncomfortable future for a lot of the e-properties that people enjoy happens to hinge on the fact that the way they are the most useful clashes with the ways they can make money. Big time. Facebook will sponsor stories, alienating users a little for eyeball time. Twitter will make sure promoted thi…

This makes a lot of sense.

Facebook + Twitter alienate their users by watering down the experience with ads, losing the 'cool'ness they need to keep eyeballs on them.

I think that's where Google+ can swoop in and make Twitter+Facebook look like Myspace. Thoughts?

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#12

Post by falling »

thesagan wrote: post #8
simonsarris wrote: post #2

Maybe there's a trend here, but maybe its just me being short-sighted. I'll type out what I'm thinking. I think that the uncomfortable future for a lot of the e-properties that people enjoy happens to hinge on the fact that the way they are the most useful clashes with the ways they can make money. Big time. Facebook will sponsor stories, alienating users a little for eyeball time. Twitter will make sure promoted thi…

What I wonder is what the effect could be if Facebook or some other "social" company were to cut users' in to some of the ad revenue, e.g., as in somehow getting compensated for having your photo appear next to an ad for a company you "liked". I can imagine benefits, as well as strained trust, between the company and users -- but it seems to me that so far the users themselves have only played one part of the process…

Your compensation for being “used” in the advertisements is using the service, that’s how you pay for it.

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#14

Post by ricardobeat »

Squanto wrote: post #11
simonsarris wrote: post #2

Maybe there's a trend here, but maybe its just me being short-sighted. I'll type out what I'm thinking. I think that the uncomfortable future for a lot of the e-properties that people enjoy happens to hinge on the fact that the way they are the most useful clashes with the ways they can make money. Big time. Facebook will sponsor stories, alienating users a little for eyeball time. Twitter will make sure promoted thi…

This makes a lot of sense. Facebook + Twitter alienate their users by watering down the experience with ads, losing the 'cool'ness they need to keep eyeballs on them. I think that's where Google+ can swoop in and make Twitter+Facebook look like Myspace. Thoughts?

Why wouldn't Google+ also throw ads at us, since that's their core business?

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#15

Post by SoftwareMaven »

biggfoot wrote: post #9

The little voice in my head just got a whole lot louder - "don't friggin build a business on someone else's business. Do your own shit!"

It is ok to build on somebody else's business IFF you have a contract in place protecting you. The problem is, today, there are few contracts signed because that would prevent tomorrow's pivot (that screws all of today's partners).

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#16

Post by suprgeek »

I think this is a Great wake-up call to everyone who builds on someone else's platform. You are not the master of the house - and can be kicked out at any time.

One way to circumvent this is to have binding legal stuff in place, another is bring so much unique value to the platform that the owners are scared of mass defections should they break your app.

With Twitter I do not see any Third-party app in this category. Only companies of the likes of Apple & Google have the necessary influence to cause Twitter to think twice before making incompatible changes. Others are toast.

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#17

Post by joebadmo »

simonsarris wrote: post #2

Maybe there's a trend here, but maybe its just me being short-sighted. I'll type out what I'm thinking. I think that the uncomfortable future for a lot of the e-properties that people enjoy happens to hinge on the fact that the way they are the most useful clashes with the ways they can make money. Big time. Facebook will sponsor stories, alienating users a little for eyeball time. Twitter will make sure promoted thi…

Yet another reason things systems like Twitter and Facebook shouldn't be silos with centralized control, but distributed, decentralized, self-hosted systems built on open standards.

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#18

Post by dm8 »

simonsarris wrote: post #2

Maybe there's a trend here, but maybe its just me being short-sighted. I'll type out what I'm thinking. I think that the uncomfortable future for a lot of the e-properties that people enjoy happens to hinge on the fact that the way they are the most useful clashes with the ways they can make money. Big time. Facebook will sponsor stories, alienating users a little for eyeball time. Twitter will make sure promoted thi…

What is the solution then? Ads are going to be integral part of the Internet.

Ads need native integration that is clean and unobtrusive. Nobody complains about Google AdWords. There is whole new industry of SEO/SEM around it.

I'm hopeful about "sponsored stories" or "sponsored tweets". I hope they will do well because they won't distract user like banners or interstitial. User can completely ignore sponsored stories.

MySpace was train-wreck due to its UI and it was never popular in masses (only teens loved it). Digg failed due to major UX upgrade and users fled to Reddit.

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#19

Post by Lazare »

ricardobeat wrote: post #14
Squanto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes a lot of sense. Facebook + Twitter alienate their users by watering down the experience with ads, losing the 'cool'ness they need to keep eyeballs on them. I think that's where Google+ can swoop in and make Twitter+Facebook look like Myspace. Thoughts?

Why wouldn't Google+ also throw ads at us, since that's their core business?

A couple of reasons.

First, G+ has three values for Google. 1) It gives them rich information about their visitors demographics, interests, hobbies, friends, etc. 2) It's a platform for displaying ads. 3) It's a way of screwing with Facebook, who is a potential threat.

But as Facebook has learned, social networking websites are very poor places to display ads. When someone is searching for a "web host" or "how to stop mysql from crashing", a targeted ad for a new web host or a new database engine is (relatively) likely to be clicked on. When someone is checking to see if their friend Hazel has posted any pictures from the party last weekend, there is no targeted ad which is likely to be clicked on.

G+ is simply not a good platform for displaying ads. And trying to do so too forcefully will push people away, which will undermine reason 3. It will also - crucially, from Google's point of view, since it's (probably) the entire reason they developed G+ - it will undermine reason 1. Google's core business isn't throwing ads at people, it's throwing carefully targeted ads at people, and G+ is a major part of their strategy for getting the data they need to improve their targeting.

Re: Did Twitter Just Deliver Third Party Apps A Death Blow?

#20

Post by snprbob86 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #14
Squanto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes a lot of sense. Facebook + Twitter alienate their users by watering down the experience with ads, losing the 'cool'ness they need to keep eyeballs on them. I think that's where Google+ can swoop in and make Twitter+Facebook look like Myspace. Thoughts?

Why wouldn't Google+ also throw ads at us, since that's their core business?

Because their enterprise business is growing and they could take a loss to undermine Facebook and eventually funnel eyeballs towards docs, etc.

But they probably still will.

Post reply on HN