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What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

marco.org

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

#131

Post by shawn-butler »

taylorbuley wrote: post #110
jmilloy wrote: post #85

Twitter: Don't build core-feature Twitter clients, we probably won't approve them. Atta: I built a core-feature Twitter client! Twitter: Sorry, we're not approving your core-feature Twitter client. Who is surprised? How is this news? Were you expecting them to not apply their own rules? It seems like a clear-cut case, and concluding "don't build anything for Twitter" is just throwing a temper tantrum.

It's interesting to me that a prevailing view seems to suggest that developers have a right to plumb a given service for data. This worldview seems to come up most in relation to free services, so maybe it's a belief that freely consumable services via the Web or mobile give should mean a freedom to consume the same data via an API.

I believe a person owns the data traces of their life, not twitter, not facebook, not any financial institution or ad network.

Do you think by going to a physician and having a checkup that the hospital or doctor's network should now have the right to sell the fact that you have some skin condition to Johnson & Johnson so they can target you with advertising?

I do not. I feel a physician and twitter have a legal responsibility to insure my data is secured by them and also that I have the right to take my data and and provide it to a competitor.

Twitter and my physician are a little different in that Twitter should be able to tell me the consumer that I can not use both their service and another, whereas a physician is obligation bound to treat me. Twitter is refusing to engage and be honest with its users however and instead is smashing competition in a similar fashion that Craigslist is not being honest with its users.

I have been told my view is un-American and that is I guess proving in practice to be true. Americans seem more than happy to bargain away their information for a few pieces of candy.

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

#132

Post by camus »

make the twitter api a paid api, and everything will be clearer.

Businesses that rely on twitter will have a contractual relationship with twitter , meaning less uncertainty ,less competition ( since you'll have to pay upfront to access twitter's data , less clients ).

That's the solution that makes sense , instead of this half baked situation twitter api developers are in.

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

#133

Post by jcromartie »

arscan wrote: post #98
jcromartie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?).

I mean a platform where the vast majority of users don't pay to use it. Why would Twitter be happy to engineer and support an API for Twitter client apps if it means they can't reach those users the way they need to to generate revenue?

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

#134

Post by jcromartie »

mcantelon wrote: post #107
jmilloy wrote: post #85

Twitter: Don't build core-feature Twitter clients, we probably won't approve them. Atta: I built a core-feature Twitter client! Twitter: Sorry, we're not approving your core-feature Twitter client. Who is surprised? How is this news? Were you expecting them to not apply their own rules? It seems like a clear-cut case, and concluding "don't build anything for Twitter" is just throwing a temper tantrum.

>concluding "don't build anything for Twitter" is just throwing a temper tantrum. Not really. They led people on, over the years, into building on their API. People spent a lot of time and money building Twitter clients. Then they pulled the rug out. Why would you build anything using an API that could get arbitrarily locked down in the future?

The thing I don't get is: why build a Twitter client? Doing anything remotely useful with Twitter involves building something really substantial on top of the stream of tweets and users.

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

#135

Post by kmfrk »

jmilloy wrote: post #85

Twitter: Don't build core-feature Twitter clients, we probably won't approve them. Atta: I built a core-feature Twitter client! Twitter: Sorry, we're not approving your core-feature Twitter client. Who is surprised? How is this news? Were you expecting them to not apply their own rules? It seems like a clear-cut case, and concluding "don't build anything for Twitter" is just throwing a temper tantrum.

It's worth keeping in mind that Marco is/was doubly fucked, because in addition to cracking down on client tokens, quoth section 3b of the new display guidelines:

    No other social or 3rd party actions may be attached
    to a Tweet.
This was the wording of the section at the famous time of the Twitter blog post describing the Bermuda quadrant of impending developer ostracism. This is what it reads currently:

    No other social or 3rd party actions similar to Follow,
    Reply, Retweet and Favorite may be attached to a Tweet.
For some, there is not only one, but several Damoclean swords dangling over developers.

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

#136

Post by streptomycin »

mcantelon wrote: post #107
jmilloy wrote: post #85

Twitter: Don't build core-feature Twitter clients, we probably won't approve them. Atta: I built a core-feature Twitter client! Twitter: Sorry, we're not approving your core-feature Twitter client. Who is surprised? How is this news? Were you expecting them to not apply their own rules? It seems like a clear-cut case, and concluding "don't build anything for Twitter" is just throwing a temper tantrum.

>concluding "don't build anything for Twitter" is just throwing a temper tantrum. Not really. They led people on, over the years, into building on their API. People spent a lot of time and money building Twitter clients. Then they pulled the rug out. Why would you build anything using an API that could get arbitrarily locked down in the future?

But the rug was pulled out well before anyone was thinking about writing Windows 8 app.

And you build with proprietary APIs because that's where the users are. You can make a StatusNet client with no worries, but nobody will care.

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

#137

Post by AlexandrB »

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…

Maybe no free alternative, but I avoid it like the plague. I watch good TV programming after-the-fact by buying DVDs.

Edit: Also, the value of a service like TV is something determined by the individual end-user. I don't think TV is more valuable than Twitter for everyone.

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

#138

Post by javajosh »

ghshephard wrote: post #22
hnriot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you work for Twitter, I'd say you're right, and rightly so. Don't depend on someone else's API, how many times must history repeat itself before this message sinks in.

That's an unreasonable position to take. Almost all third-party software products ever created rely on some other third-party APIs, and to suggest "Don't depend on someone else's API" as a strategy would be akin to saying "Don't write software for a living." The challenge is to determine, in advance, if the platform you are writing for will maintain some reasonable level of access to the API, both now, and in the fut…

>Almost all third-party software products ever created rely on some other third-party APIs

This is evidence for an unfortunate confusion about the usage of the term "API". There is a world of difference between a third-party library and a third-party service, each of which can be said to have an API. There are plenty of pieces of software which rely on one kind of API but not the other.

It is entirely possible to write software that doesn't rely on a third-party service. If that's the point you're trying to make then great! You see the thing is about relying on third-party services is that a great amount of trust must exist between the application and the service. It's a good way to go, but when there's no actual money moving between the app and the service, everyone has reason to be a little concerned.

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

#140

Post by objclxt »

shawn-butler wrote: post #131
taylorbuley wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to me that a prevailing view seems to suggest that developers have a right to plumb a given service for data. This worldview seems to come up most in relation to free services, so maybe it's a belief that freely consumable services via the Web or mobile give should mean a freedom to consume the same data via an API.

I believe a person owns the data traces of their life, not twitter, not facebook, not any financial institution or ad network. Do you think by going to a physician and having a checkup that the hospital or doctor's network should now have the right to sell the fact that you have some skin condition to Johnson & Johnson so they can target you with advertising? I do not. I feel a physician and twitter have a legal resp…

Hospitals actually do sell their patient data to drug companies[1]. Not for advertising, but for medical research and drug trials.

[1]: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/drugmakers-mine-data-fo...

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