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What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

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Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#91

Post by jeremysmyth »

Now that it has the userbase, it's milking its situation. The talk in the beginning was "How are they gonna make money out of this?" and the answer is gradually unfolding. Kudos to them or starting the way they did, shame on them for closing out the very things that brought them to where they are.

Late arrivals like identi.ca might not be as polished, but they offer a similar product, with open APIs. Being based on open and federated standards like status.net, it's extremely unlikely that identi.ca will ever get the ego trip twitter got, and in fact is much more likely that it will be more open over time, and more useful even if other competition arises. What it doesn't have, and what we (consumers as well as devs) can help with, is by heading over there and giving them users and status and content.

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#92

Post by snowwrestler »

swombat wrote: post #31
JohnTHaller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that I don't know a single real-life person that is on app.net, I wouldn't consider it an alternative to anything.

The same used to be true of Twitter.

Yes but early-days Twitter did not have to compete with current-day Twitter when it was trying to grow.

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#93

Post by tinco »

koide wrote: post #69

I wonder why something like "If you want more than 100k usernames, either pay us $x per username or use our advertisement API and put whatever tweets/ads we push where we tell you to" is not an option. It would be refreshingly honest and for some people/clients it could work, plus it could earn them some of the needed cash.

This doesn't work for them because Twitter has had 1.16 billion dollars in funding.

Getting money from teeny little twitter apps is not the sort of plan they are going to make that money back with. Imagine if they charged a buck per username per year.

This would probably be enough money to put tweetro out of business (say 100k dollar per year), but it would not come close to the amount of money they need to make.

Even if something makes you good money, often you have to scrap it if it isn't or even endangers your core product.

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#94

Post by mattdeboard »

pessimizer wrote: post #84
mattdeboard wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this hold up when you're talking about web development, especially javascript-heavy or -only applications? You live and die by the browser API don't you?

Don't develop for the quirks of any particular browser.

Except for when the browsers implement standards differently, e.g. appcache, localstorage, etc.

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#95

Post by ottbot »

avolcano wrote: post #83
AlexandrB wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how $36/year is "rich". Cable TV costs more than that per month! Personally, I'm sick of being sold to. Ad-supported is not the only business model in town and I'm not sure when using an ad-supported service over a paid one became a virtue. If this makes me "rich", ok. App.net is just proof that at least a few people agree with me.

Cable TV has a much better value proposition than a Twitter alternative. There's no free alternative to cable TV with a comparable feature set. I do think it's an exaggeration to say that app.net caters to the rich, but I can guarantee you that the demographics skew much more upper class, between being an app that is charged for and a service that mostly has interested hackers (who, nowadays, tend to be an affluent b…

You may not be aware such a thing exists, but I'd consider http://www.freesat.co.uk or or even http://www.freeview.co.uk to be (subscription) free alternatives to cable TV.

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#96

Post by aGHz »

spoonmonkeyuk wrote: post #55
quotemstr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're going to base a business on scraping twitter.com? A business? Probably too high risk. A nice FOSS client, though? Why not?

Why not? Because of liability to law suits for breach of the terms of service or copyright violation. Third parties have been sued for scraping in the past.

You seem to have gotten downvoted without comment, so let me chime in. He's proposing a FOSS client. There's no third party here, the client is using this software to breach their own ToS (supposing there's a clause in there by which you're only allowed to access twitter.com from a browser).

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#97

Post by qq66 »

[deleted] wrote: post #78
qq66 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we (LiveLoop ) think Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, etc. will all grow to encompass Web Service in the application itself, rather than being replaced wholesale by Web apps the way Google wants you to. LiveLoop is our PowerPoint plugin that makes presentations real-time collaborative without ever having to leave Office -- available at http://getliveloop.com

[deleted]

Well, I am a strong believer in Native > Web. That's why we started the company -- so only alerting other people to the fact that we're doing something in the same arena. I didn't make the comment to sell to you -- there is a common cause behind why I made the comment and why I started the company.

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#98

Post by arscan »

jcromartie wrote: post #63
arscan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't rely on someone else's API? That's like going through life never trusting anybody. Sure, you'll avoid getting burned, but I hardly think that's an optimal strategy. A better strategy is to trust somebody (/an API) until they give you good reasons not to. Admittedly, twitter seems to have broken that trust. I personally would't use them as a platform, unless the benefits clearly outweigh the risks of them haphaz…

How about "don't build your business on a free service's platform".

Free? Free to whom? Twitter charges some users, but doesn't charge others. The same could be said about just about every platform out there. I don't think that's particularly useful advice, because I don't know what you mean by free (is Android free? what about network tv? what about the road systems?).

Re: What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

#99

Post by pavel_lishin »

tinco wrote: post #93
koide wrote: post #69

I wonder why something like "If you want more than 100k usernames, either pay us $x per username or use our advertisement API and put whatever tweets/ads we push where we tell you to" is not an option. It would be refreshingly honest and for some people/clients it could work, plus it could earn them some of the needed cash.

This doesn't work for them because Twitter has had 1.16 billion dollars in funding. Getting money from teeny little twitter apps is not the sort of plan they are going to make that money back with. Imagine if they charged a buck per username per year. This would probably be enough money to put tweetro out of business (say 100k dollar per year), but it would not come close to the amount of money they need to make. Eve…

It would work if their goal was to gently discourage developers writing client apps without totally cutting them off; an economic disincentive.

But it doesn't make sense to do that, and they don't want to anyway.

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