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Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

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Re: Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

#31

Post by zbruhnke »

meritt wrote: post #20

Twitter wants to validate each domain that has a card so they can approve & exert control. They cannot control what products a ribbon customer promotes via ribbon. If I wanted to sell illegal drugs or child pornography photographs, those would show up on twitter.com & twitter apps in a nice card-like experience complete with a 'Buy Now' button. That's why they shut it down.

Yes because it would be TERRIBLY hard to institue a whitelist for domains that could be issued twitter cards and have an API call to register and either allow or not allow it.

all I really mean by this that if Twitter were not being malicious here they would be able to work with Ribbon and other companies who have similar ideas that could help change the internet for the better.

Re: Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

#33

Post by photorized »

smrtinsert wrote: post #10
gailees wrote: post #8

Is Twitter trying to scare developers off of it's platform!?

No, it just tracks which developer has good ideas, makes their applications against TOS and then implements the same thing badly.

... or forces successful devs to sell.

Re: Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

#34

Post by timdorr »

meritt wrote: post #20

Twitter wants to validate each domain that has a card so they can approve & exert control. They cannot control what products a ribbon customer promotes via ribbon. If I wanted to sell illegal drugs or child pornography photographs, those would show up on twitter.com & twitter apps in a nice card-like experience complete with a 'Buy Now' button. That's why they shut it down.

It's likely because it's all wrapped up in Twitter's web interface. To the average user, it looks like you just paid Twitter for something. If you have any sort of problem with shipping or the product itself, you're likely going to go back to where you bought it from: Twitter.

They're simply protecting themselves from a series of problems that would be completely out of Twitter's control to help in any way. Twitter would always come up the loser for any of Ribbon's mistakes. They don't even have a way to punt any support issues over to Ribbon.

Re: Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

#35

Post by mynameisvlad »

timdorr wrote: post #34
meritt wrote: post #20

Twitter wants to validate each domain that has a card so they can approve & exert control. They cannot control what products a ribbon customer promotes via ribbon. If I wanted to sell illegal drugs or child pornography photographs, those would show up on twitter.com & twitter apps in a nice card-like experience complete with a 'Buy Now' button. That's why they shut it down.

It's likely because it's all wrapped up in Twitter's web interface. To the average user, it looks like you just paid Twitter for something. If you have any sort of problem with shipping or the product itself, you're likely going to go back to where you bought it from: Twitter. They're simply protecting themselves from a series of problems that would be completely out of Twitter's control to help in any way. Twitter w…

To be fair, it does say "Not affiliated with Twitter" in a blue background.

Re: Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

#36

Post by babs474 »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #22
josh2600 wrote: post #4

Are you surprised? Why don't we all go back to AOL and Geocities. The problem with Twitter is that it is not clear exactly what their approach to their revenue problem might be. I understand they want to monetize their API but does that go hand-in-hand with quashing every potential competitor who happens to use the API with a modicum of success? I'm bearish about any company that builds a data warehouse on the basis…

I wouldn't touch Twitter without a contract signed by my company and by Twitter. Any attempt to utilize their content consumers for anything other than reading content you produce has been shown to be at extreme risk of termination. I don't believe Twitter doesn't know how they are going to generate revenue. I'm not convinced they can actually implement their ideas, but, if they had no ideas, I think they would be le…

You are right. I'm going through this exact same thing with the reddit api and chrome app store.

A lot of api providers seem to have a few limited (mostly lame) use cases in mind. Developers by their nature are creative boundry pushers. Conflict is inevitable.

I just wish api providers would take greater care in thinking about and describing what exactly is going to be allowed and not. Rather than putting something out there, having developers throw things at the wall, then banning things you don't like after the fact.

But they don't, it's a painful lesson to learn.

Re: Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

#37

Post by Jsarokin »

Throwing in my 2 cents:

It looks like what Ribbon submitted to the Twitter validator was a video using the "player" card: http://cl.ly/image/2R2i1J302Z2g

The player card is designed to handle embedding videos, which is what Ribbon initially showed, however when they launched their new feature they morphed the embedding options to display a custom in-stream purchase button / unit.

In reality, they should have just used a 'product' card (granted, they would not have the added ability to purchase in stream - it would need to link back to their website).

Using the player card was a pretty clever way to get the payments to happen directly on twitter, but it seems that it bent too many of their rules. They'll probably just have to use the product card like everyone else.

Re: Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon’s Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature

#40

Post by mitchellhislop »

babs474 wrote: post #36
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't touch Twitter without a contract signed by my company and by Twitter. Any attempt to utilize their content consumers for anything other than reading content you produce has been shown to be at extreme risk of termination. I don't believe Twitter doesn't know how they are going to generate revenue. I'm not convinced they can actually implement their ideas, but, if they had no ideas, I think they would be le…

You are right. I'm going through this exact same thing with the reddit api and chrome app store. A lot of api providers seem to have a few limited (mostly lame) use cases in mind. Developers by their nature are creative boundry pushers. Conflict is inevitable. I just wish api providers would take greater care in thinking about and describing what exactly is going to be allowed and not. Rather than putting something o…

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