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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#411

Post by latexr »

gfodor wrote: post #101
MBCook wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Starting Feb 1st using a third part client will require Twitter Blue.” That’s all it would have taken. Probably would have made a huge increase in subscribers too. This is 100% a control move. He wants full control over how everyone experiences Twitter (not sure why). So this was pulled. Of course you can NEVER go back from this move.

I think that is right. A public API radically slows down product iteration since each feature needs to be considered in terms of its blast radius to third party clients. It probably burned the bridge for good this time, but killing the API to speed up product velocity isn’t an insane move if you value that more than the existing 3rd party ecosystem.

While in general that may make sense, in the specifics of Twitter it’s just another unnecessary bad decision in a chain of unnecessary bad decisions.

The biggest issue isn’t what they’ve done but how they did it: dismissively, without warning, justified days later with a flimsy provably false excuse.

> A public API radically slows down product iteration since each feature needs to be considered in terms of its blast radius to third party clients.

Twitter’s public API was already lacking. There are several features, like polls, third-party clients never had access to. No one would be surprised if the API remained static forever.

> killing the API to speed up product velocity isn’t an insane move if you value that more than the existing 3rd party ecosystem.

The API wasn’t completely disabled, it’s still working for smaller clients.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#412

Post by faizmokhtar »

WorldMaker wrote: post #339
Pxtl wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the big challenge with Mastodon is it's basically Twitter as it was like 15 years ago before they added a lot of features that define the modern Twitter experience, like trending/searching on keywords instead of just hashtags (something the leadership has said they do not want to support ever - imho a flag on the toot declaring it scrapeable would be better), an algorithmic feed that considers your follows foll…

> Twitter 15 years ago was a home of weirdos and journalists mostly. There's a reason it needed changes to take off. Journalists ignored Twitter until the mainstream was on it. It was definitely full of a community of weirdos. I was there. I was an early adopter of Twitter and the "no algorithms, no engagement metrics" Twitter was something I missed and was part of why I left Twitter around about 2016. It is somethin…

> Twitter was about ephemeral day to day life

This is what I like about Mastodon now. People(including me) posting about their mundane life.

There's no "growth hacker" looking to game the algorithm, there's no listicle about JS and the algorithm didn't try to push for the latest "viral dumb takes" to you.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#414

Post by rsynnott »

themagician wrote: post #234
system16 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said the same thing even a few weeks ago, but the momentum for Mastodon is growing rapidly and it's really impressive to see, and Ivory is a very impressive client even in beta. Almost everyone I followed on Twitter is using it now, and I actually prefer the experience. It's like Twitter but without all the bots/spam/hate, at least for now.

What is "almost everyone"? Four people? Using it on what server? Mastadon is more like Discord than Twitter. There is no core server. There is no core experience. It's just an instanced message board.

On twitter I followed 1004 people, and was followed by 680. Mastodon: following 381 and followed by 202. They're across lots of instances; it doesn't make a significant difference.

I'm finding Mastodon generally better than Twitter a few months ago, and far better than Twitter today. The "For You" thing Twitter keeps shoving at me is just _nonsense_, and the "Following" section is a bit of a howling wasteland a this point.

> Mastadon is more like Discord than Twitter. There is no core server. There is no core experience. It's just an instanced message board

Have you ever actually _used_ it? This seems like a peculiar view of it.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#415

Post by rsynnott »

rurp wrote: post #210
hiidrew wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what happens after that? 40B acquisition to bankruptcy sounds brutal. I'm sure there's some nuanced financial way they can recover and continue but wow.

Elon almost certainly has enough money to keep funding Twitter until he gets bored with it and moves onto something else; which, granted, might not even take a year. It's hard to say what happense at that point but my guess is that he sells it for a fraction of the purchase price. Twitter has a big enough network that there will be something left in the wreckage that someone can try to rebuild from. Bankruptcy could…

If it was to go bankrupt, it's unlikely it would just be _shut down_; the creditors would take it over and install new management.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#416

Post by herzzolf »

paxys wrote: post #351
hk__2 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you don’t post your questions directly, rather than asking if you can ask?

Reminds me of all the people who will send "hey got a minute?" or "hey I have a question" or simply "hey!" in a work DM and wait for a response. Just ask your damn question!

https://nohello.net/, I'm sending that to all of the offenders.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#417

Post by barnabee »

33955985 wrote: post #251
barnabee wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acessing APIs from 3rd party clients isn't "goodwill" and should be legally protected.

Who built the API and who pays to maintain it? These are not public goods in the traditional sense. The incentives must align or else the benefit is only maintained through benign neglect.

Who cares? Making the world meaningfully better will probably break some business models.

Fact is if you expose an API publicly, at that boundary you [should] lose the right to control what software interacts with it. Web browsers are called user agents for a reason.

If a service is valuable, people will pay for it directly and more than cover the cost of hosting an API. If a company can’t make money without hijacking people’s attention and tricking them into doing things that profit them by controlling the software running on their users’ computers then maybe it shouldn’t exist.

Not saying this is your view, but it amazes me how many people think companies should be able to write anything they like in terms of service and/or that “they wouldn’t be profitable if they weren’t allowed to do bad things” is a good reason not to ban companies from doing bad things.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#418

Post by rstevens333 »

MBCook wrote: post #22
bradgessler wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is as good as Tweetbot. Using Ivory makes most of the "UX issues" of Mastodon go away ... almost.

Same. I was having trouble with Mastodon. Nothing felt right from a UI design perspective. With Ivory I feel at home. Can’t wait to start paying for it.

SAME

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#419

Post by kalleboo »

seydor wrote: post #111
chc4 wrote: post #90

I've been on twitter since 2009 and have 100k+ tweet. Since they've killed all third-party clients I've basically stopped using twitter, and have no intention of using the (bad) official client. Good job Elon!

to all the people who claim this, i wish there was a RemindMe! feature to check back in a few months People who have invested years of their lives writing thousands of tweets aren't giving up investments so easily. This is like real life investments or relationships, it takes a lot to break them

I used TweetDelete to wipe out my 30,000 tweets to help me along

I've been having more fun on Mastodon this past month than I had on Twitter for the past year or so. It feels more like an old-school web forum somehow.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#420

Post by unshavedyak »

riley_dog wrote: post #167
unshavedyak wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sidenote, as an Ivory user i'm quite pleased with it. Getting an invite can be a bit challenging, currently. Following @ivory@tapbots.social for invites is how i got mine, fwiw. edit : https://tapbots.social/@ivory/109683219720510229 though it seems they intend to get Ivory out ASAP due to how this decision has impacted their business. So maybe waiting for Invites won't be needed for long

No more invites. Their TestFlight allocation is full.

Correct, that's what i meant by following them on Mastodon for invites. For now, you have to wait for invites to become available if you want one.
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