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Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

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Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#171

Post by ajanuary »

masklinn wrote: post #127

So from the "fantastic" quadrant scheme, basically they don't want users (which they re-labelled as consumers ) to actually use (engage with) the service, instead they want: 1. "consumers" to be analyzed 2. Companies to use the service Well at least it's rather clear what the new and future values of Twitter are.

It's not that they don't want users to engage with the service, it's that they want as much control over that interaction as they can possibly get away with.

Cynically, the more garauntess they can give to the other three quadrants, the more money they can make from them.

More positively, things like requiring reply/retweet/follow buttons with embedded content encourages more interaction with the service.

If a (lazy) journalist makes up an article from collating a few tweets you're now encouraged to reply, retweet and interact with twitter right there rather than using the Facebook Connect comments system at the bottom of the page.

Their value to the other three quadrants is interactions. They're not stupid enough to intentionally reduce that, though one could argue they're not going about it the best way.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#172

Post by ajanuary »

shuzchen wrote: post #55

I wonder if this is coming because they can't keep up with the write load. The writes that come from these third party apps (that enable messaging multiple people, or queuing/delaying tweets) might throw a wrench in their system if it doesn't follow the natural usage they've designed it for. The only other reason I can fathom why they would doing this is they eventually intend to heavily push ads over their network,…

> I wonder if this is coming because they can't keep up with the write load.

Wouldn't an easier solution for that be to tighten the rate limiting for posting?

> The only other reason I can fathom why they would doing this is they eventually intend to heavily push ads over their network

I think that's pretty much it.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#173

Post by bbuffone »

minikites wrote: post #125
bbuffone wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Remember AOL Keywords?

Now you mention it, i do, but i remember they rarely mentioned AOL's name. they would just say. Enter keyword *.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#174

Post by nl »

dasil003 wrote: post #154
nl wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is ultimately infrastructure Bullshit. To reinforcer this point: in the early days of Twitter it kept falling over under the load - the one thing infrastructure should never do. It didn't matter. To further reinforcer this point: OSStatus/Identi.ca has a widely deployed, API compatible implementation of Twitter. That really is infrastructure, and yet it has had approximately zero impact on Twitter's growth or…

> MySpace sold to News Ltd, and then went downhill. Maybe Twitter won't sell itself to a company that is actively internet-hostile. But yes, you are correct: potentially any company could fail. I don't think that's it. I don't remember the acquisition disrupting their strategy much. Rather I think the quality of their code base and inability to keep up with Facebook's agility is what drove the nails in the coffin.

* I don't remember the acquisition disrupting their strategy much.*

I find it very interesting that the rate of growth in MySpace's membership slowed significantly with 6 months of being bought[1].

I think the quality of their code base and inability to keep up with Facebook's agility is what drove the nails in the coffin

I agree 100%. And I think News Ltd was to blame: they didn't (don't) understand the internet, and didn't know how to manage a high-growth property like MySpace.

But then again, it could all be co-incidence.

[1] http://www.petehatesmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/mys...

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#175

Post by danudey »

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?

I've turned that off, because I tend to get notifications in my clients. There's no good Windows client yet though, so when I'm on my gaming machine and don't have my phone handy, I use the web client for tweeting, and I never notice DMs.

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#176

Post by tannerburson »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #145
huskyr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's OStatus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus ), which is supposed to be an open standard for microblogging.

No, it's not quite what I had in mind. OStatus is intended for exchange of updates between sites that have statuses (statii?), while I'm thinking of something that would exchange messages between users directly without the need for a central server (except probably for user discovery and connection).

So you're wanting to reinvent XMPP?

Re: Twitter to Client Developers: Drop Dead

#177

Post by inthewoods »

potatolicious wrote: post #151
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…

I don't think this move, in an of itself, will doom Twitter, but it is just another example of why Twitter and its model aren't working. The problem with Twitter is the same problem that plagues innumerable startups - they've built a product without even once thinking about the business model, and are not scrambling for revenue. Inexorably, everything they do in the pursuit of revenue is going to involve making the p…

I'm not sure you can claim a company that is likely bringing in $540m in revenue this year and is expected to bring in $1b in 2014 not working. Or that it has no built-in monetization. Sure those numbers could be/likely are inflated, but there is still real money flowing to Twitter.

Obvious they may be "priced" at a higher valuation - but anyone looking to buy them is going to have to pay up - they are a rare commodity if they are hitting those revenue numbers.

Personally, I've expected this for a while and never understood why anyone would spend time on developing a client - unless you're developing something for a business to manage their social network. I am a bit surprised they don't just put some requirements on what clients have to carry in terms of advertising and that would be it.

Reality of the situation is that most 3rd party clients outside of Twitter probably aren't that big relative to people going to Twitter directly now.

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