Twitter Discards Client UI Community

Antique Geekmeister writes "Twitter has just decided to discard the community of developers who've created interesting and innovative UI applications. The announcement shows that they intend to switch from the 'bazaar' model of development to the 'cathedral,' with much tighter control of user interfaces for 'security' and 'consistency.'"

Comments

Wait, Twitter has a community?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that there's no real value to Twitter, so why would it have a community?

Re:Wait, Twitter has a community?

[tomhudson]

There's no real value to the [select * political_party where political_party='p0wned by corporations' or elected >=1960].. That hasn't stopped people voting for them.

Re:Wait, Twitter has a community?

[rilian4]

There's no real value to the [select * political_party where political_party='p0wned by corporations' or elected >=1960].. That hasn't stopped people voting for them.

So essentially you're saying there is no value to any political party whatsoever as 100% of them fit your query. Voting is our right and our duty therefore we must vote for someone. Whom would you possibly vote for using your theory that *all* political parties have no value?

Re:Wait, Twitter has a community?

[feepness]

Voting is our right and our duty therefore we must vote for someone.

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles. [unmasks them]
[audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
[murmurs]
Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.

Fork it

[Threni]

And while you're at it, support more than 140 chars, or allow compression, or something.

Re:Fork it

[davester666]

It already supports compression. Common methods of compression include: removal of vowels, homonyms [like 'ur' instead of 'your'], etc...

Re:Fork it

[AndrewNeo]

Supporting more than 140 characters would break SMS support.

Re:Fork it

[Gaygirlie]

Enforced terseness in messages is the only reason I (sometimes) follow Twitter

I have it completely vice versa: I don't simply see anything worth saying that can be said in only 140 letters, and if it is just a link to another site then I much rather skip the one extra step and go straight for the other site.

Demonstrates quite well how different people can be.

Re:Fork it

[contrapunctus]

I summarized your post in less than 140 characters but according to you there is nothing worth saying in it.

I have it completely vice versa: I don't simply see anything worth saying that can be said in only 140 letters unless it's a link which i could go to directly.

Twitter's End Game

[dagamer34]

What this really means is that Twitter doesn't want users to have clients that outright refuse to display Promoted Tweets or things like the #dickbar. Seems they are all about the money now...

Re:Twitter's End Game

[MrEricSir]

Considering how much money they've made up until this point, that's hardly surprising.

Did they really think this through?

[Jugalator]

The client variety for all tastes is what seems to have in part made Twitter so big.

It has unusually diverse clients, and has become a strong platform. And now they throw the "platform" part out to just make it a grey, boring old school software application with no reach for varying interests and usage scenarios in their community?

OK, well... It's their choice of course. But good job in trying to keep the extremely high popularity up. That's all I can say...

I think they'll need our best wishes.

Twitter was where many companies work their butts off to be. A company with their own client, but also a rich ecosystem of clients. Apparently, some don't like that, and *willingly* deconstruct their achievements.

Re:What?

[dagamer34]

I don't you read the article that well. This part in particular is troubling for a Twitter developer: "*The Opportunity for Developers* Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no. " Basically, they are saying, "Don't bother writing a Twitter client, ours is so much better than yours." Of course, the REALLY funny part is that Twitter just bought Atebits, rebranded Tweetie and turned that into their iPhone Twitter client. Can you honestly tell me that Twitterific or TweetDeck weren't easily as worthy? And since they've essentially kicked developers out of their primary bread and butter, what's to stop them from going after other areas involving Twitter? They already have an official URL shortening service, so it's only a matter of time before images and video are taken as well. It's the patented "Extend and Extinguish" model pioneered by another famous tech company we all know...

That isn't what they said.

[LWATCDR]

"If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve
your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you
do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user
experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of
Service. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter
ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure
a high bar is maintained. "
Sound like they are just setting some standards.

Re:That isn't what they said.

[John Whitley]

While Twitter was both vague and threatening in this missive (really, wtf?), I'm also picking up a definite theme of them wanting to shut down client apps that are primarily used by spammers. I've noted a short list of apps/sites that generate follows that are virtually always spam -- to the point where I want to auto-block any follow that occurs via those apps.

Re:That isn't what they said.

[byronblue]

by "high bar" do they mean #dickbar?

Re:What?

[Phoshi]

In defense of having their own url shortener, having multiple third party shorteners is a fucking stupid idea and should never have happened. The internet is a bad enough web of inter-tangled links as it is without introducing additional routing layers through unmoderated third parties who run a service which is very hard to monetise. (Because if I have to pay to make links, I won't make them. If I have to pay to view links, nobody will post them. If they serve ads, it's no longer a transparent forward and loses most of its appeal) That a third party service could die and take a huge chunk of the value of twitter's database with it is a terrifying thought, and shortening first party is the only reasonable way around it. It might be them being dicks, but it should have been there from the start.

Re:Not discarding, just tightening control

[alexandre_ganso]

No. That means that the ones who does not implement their revenue stream (aka dickbar) won't have candy.

Re:What?

[tomhudson]

This is a stupid article. Read through TFA and you'll see they didn't do this at all. They tightened up the regulations with regard to tweet semantics to protect the core Twitter experience across multiple third-party apps.

I call shenanigans. If the "core Twitter experience" is so great, they wouldn't have to protect it - anything that broke it would die a painful, lonely, ugly death, since people wouldn't use it.

It's the same as Canonical changing the amazon affiliate id in the Banshee music player - another money-loser getting ready to "monetize".the end user.

Beginning of the end

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Ah Twitter. Once seemed so promising, now in decline as they try to jam sponsored tweets (i.e. spam) in front of their users eyeballs.

Nighty night.

Re:Beginning of the end

[sbarber]

Yes indeed. #jumpthesharkmoments

I have nothing to share except this offtopic joke

[zill]

The announcement shows that they intend to switch from the 'bazaar' model of development to the 'cathedral,'

Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.