Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#111

Post by throwa » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 8:57 AM UTC

Developers seem to flock to platforms like Apple, Facebook and Twitter based on the fact that they have a large and growing user base without giving thought to this issue of commoditization of complements and how the ultimately destroy the business or livelihood of these developers.

Most people building products or sharecropping on other people's platform never make meaningful income and yet those platform keep will prefer to announce large sums paid out to developers to encourage you to keep building complements. Apple will claim they paid out $5 billion but spread the numerous app developers it becomes peanut and not enough to pay their bills. They won't tell you that to pay out $5bn they made atleast $2billion based on their 30% cut.

They don't tell you that iOS app success is a "lottery": 60% (or more) of developers don't break even

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lo...

http://andrewchen.co/2012/08/15/mobile-app-startups-are-fail...

I really hope people will think hard before building their business on the back of Apple, Facebook, Twitter or any such platform. You can use them as as distribution without being dependent on them and that is the way to go.

Be your own bitch and not a Twitter, Apple or Facebook bitch:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bit...

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#112

Post by Tichy » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:00 AM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #99

lancewiggs wrote: post #17

I wouldn't have as much immediate issue with this if Twitter's own clients were acceptable - they are not. And this is an asinine move either way.

Twitter's own clients are fine. You can read tweets and send tweets. That's the basis of the service. It's supposed to be simple. Why don't you like it?

TweetDeck used to do Facebook+Twitter. Will they continue to work on the Facebook part? Unlikely - and there won't be other clients that do both...

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#113

Post by bbuffone » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:04 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

cletus wrote: post #36

This doesn't surprise me at all. When you develop on someone else's platform, you have to walk a fine line between not being successful at all and being too successful such that the platform provider co-opts your business (maybe you get lucky and get bought out). This is nothing new. Such moves as this were (IMHO) inevitable. They'll slowly chip away at anything they see as taking revenue from them. The part I disagr…

"Twitter is ultimately infrastructure and infrastructure seems doomed to commoditization. Twitter has eyeballs too but social platforms seem fickle at best. There is nothing preventing Twitter from becoming the next Myspace." Like others I tire of the dragging out Myspace as that guy who started on weed and ended up an incontinent meth addict in the gutter but the core of this premise is correct, the 'useful' part of…

There is one thing that twitter and facebook have that no one else in the history of... well... anything i can think of.

> They have an unlimited product placement budget.

Every TV Show, News program, Commercial, Website, Company... places the "Go to facebook.com/ford" or "tweet us @nbcnews".

This results in billions of dollars of advertising and they need to pay nothing. This helped build both twitter and facebook. Google should figure out how to get this for Google Plus. Once they do they can expand as quickly as twitter and facebook.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#114

Post by ido » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:12 AM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #95

shardling wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Twitter on the other hand offers good UX Every time I go to twitter in a browser I want to punch whoever designed it in the face. It is by far and away the most annoying site I encounter on a daily basis, which is impressive given that all I want it to do is display plaintext .

So much this I figure out they have 2 designers there, one really good and one that doesn't have the slightest idea of UX and design Case in point: the way DMs are notified to the user. That's right, in the previous web version it wasn't . And this version is better, but not great

Doesn't it send you an email if you get DMs?

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#115

Post by radarsat1 » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:22 AM UTC

Well it's not like alternatives don't exist. Of all the popular social media services, twitter has got to be one of the easiest to reimplement, it's only social inertia that keeps Twitter going. (Which says a lot about the power of social inertia.)

As usual what is needed is a decentralized approach, but that always takes time to catch on even if it can be made to work.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#116

Post by raverbashing » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:23 AM UTC

ido wrote: post #114

raverbashing wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this I figure out they have 2 designers there, one really good and one that doesn't have the slightest idea of UX and design Case in point: the way DMs are notified to the user. That's right, in the previous web version it wasn't . And this version is better, but not great

Doesn't it send you an email if you get DMs?

It's configurable

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#117

Post by icebraining » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:30 AM UTC

bbuffone wrote: post #113

ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Twitter is ultimately infrastructure and infrastructure seems doomed to commoditization. Twitter has eyeballs too but social platforms seem fickle at best. There is nothing preventing Twitter from becoming the next Myspace." Like others I tire of the dragging out Myspace as that guy who started on weed and ended up an incontinent meth addict in the gutter but the core of this premise is correct, the 'useful' part of…

There is one thing that twitter and facebook have that no one else in the history of... well... anything i can think of. > They have an unlimited product placement budget. Every TV Show, News program, Commercial, Website, Company... places the "Go to facebook.com/ford" or "tweet us @nbcnews". This results in billions of dollars of advertising and they need to pay nothing. This helped build both twitter and facebook.…

But aren't those "free ads" a result of their large userbase, not a cause? I think FB and Twitter were already very big and influential before those started popping up.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#118

Post by simonh » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:32 AM UTC

bbuffone wrote: post #113

ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Twitter is ultimately infrastructure and infrastructure seems doomed to commoditization. Twitter has eyeballs too but social platforms seem fickle at best. There is nothing preventing Twitter from becoming the next Myspace." Like others I tire of the dragging out Myspace as that guy who started on weed and ended up an incontinent meth addict in the gutter but the core of this premise is correct, the 'useful' part of…

There is one thing that twitter and facebook have that no one else in the history of... well... anything i can think of. > They have an unlimited product placement budget. Every TV Show, News program, Commercial, Website, Company... places the "Go to facebook.com/ford" or "tweet us @nbcnews". This results in billions of dollars of advertising and they need to pay nothing. This helped build both twitter and facebook.…

>Google should figure out how to get this for Google Plus.

Spoiler alert - the answer is 'be as popular as Twitter and Facebook'.

T & F didn't become so popular because of product placement. They got the product placement because they were so popular.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#119

Post by Tichy » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:42 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #36

This doesn't surprise me at all. When you develop on someone else's platform, you have to walk a fine line between not being successful at all and being too successful such that the platform provider co-opts your business (maybe you get lucky and get bought out). This is nothing new. Such moves as this were (IMHO) inevitable. They'll slowly chip away at anything they see as taking revenue from them. The part I disagr…

"There is nothing preventing Twitter from becoming the next Myspace."

Is there anything preventing any social network from becoming the next MySpace? Seems to me it is all in the users, if the users leave you are the next MySpace. I don't see how you could force users not to leave?

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#120

Post by leak » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 9:43 AM UTC

bbuffone wrote: post #113

ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Twitter is ultimately infrastructure and infrastructure seems doomed to commoditization. Twitter has eyeballs too but social platforms seem fickle at best. There is nothing preventing Twitter from becoming the next Myspace." Like others I tire of the dragging out Myspace as that guy who started on weed and ended up an incontinent meth addict in the gutter but the core of this premise is correct, the 'useful' part of…

There is one thing that twitter and facebook have that no one else in the history of... well... anything i can think of. > They have an unlimited product placement budget. Every TV Show, News program, Commercial, Website, Company... places the "Go to facebook.com/ford" or "tweet us @nbcnews". This results in billions of dollars of advertising and they need to pay nothing. This helped build both twitter and facebook.…

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but MySpace had the same exact thing for companies..."Check out our MySpace" was everywhere.