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New Twitter Policies Put the Kibosh On Mashup Services

Posted by timothy on from the controlling-the-world dept.

dburr writes "If This Then That (IFTTT) is a web mashup service that lets you connect together multiple services in unique and powerful ways. For example, you can automatically bookmark Favorited tweets using a social bookmarking service such as Delicious. Or even notify you by SMS when your server goes down. Unfortunately, Twitter has just announced policy changes that will in effect neuter it. Starting next Thursday, August 27, IFTTT will be disabling all Twitter "triggers" (the real power of IFTTT and its defining feature). (You will still be able to post Tweets through IFTTT) This has upset many long time Twitter users and members of the technorati. I have created a petition in a valiant (and perhaps vain) attempt to express our displeasure at their decision."

11 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, an online petition? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's sure to stop them.

    I'm not sure what Twitter thinks it is doing, but what it is doing is alienating a wide variety of people. They've stopped development on the Mac desktop client, destroy the iPad client, neutered third-party clients, prohibitted several forms of useful integration, and the list goes on.

    1. Re:Oh, an online petition? by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The petition itself won't stop them (though who knows, it got Dark Souls on PC after all...), but it's symptomatic of something much bigger.

      If Twitter doesn't want to become the next Digg, they should listen to their audience more.

    2. Re:Oh, an online petition? by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Petitions worked in the old days because it meant a real person had heard the news and cared enough to sign.

      Petitions have never worked, not even in the "old days".

      Much like boycotts, they depend on getting a significant fraction of a company's customer base to participate. And put bluntly, on any scale larger than your friendly neighborhood greengrocer, you just won't get enough people to participate.

      So it really comes down to a simple business decision - Twitter decided to alienate some portions of its user base for a reason. They already know it will piss some people off, and they have already decided they can accept that.

    3. Re:Oh, an online petition? by mrmeval · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I never got the point of twitter. I have an account and followed the people I know from various blogs and ended up whittling away the morons who'd post inane content. It's like they swallowed stupid pills. It seemed that a high percentage of the bloggers who are erudite and have great content on their blog would allow garbage on twitter. I quit logging in, I'm about to fart loop the email address on the account by changing it to their autoresponding yet otherwise worthless customer service email address.

      --
      I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
  2. Date is wrong by failedlogic · · Score: 4, Informative

    Date is wrong or this story is a month late. TFA says "Starting next Thurs, Sept 27, 2012". Also August 27, 2012 was a Monday.

  3. Um, some problems. by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Why is this front page? This is the result of the API and policy changes that twitter announced what, a month ago? two months?
    2) Yeah. An online petition. That'll learn 'em.

    1. Re:Um, some problems. by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Funny

      2) Yeah. An online petition. That'll learn 'em.

      Didn't you hear? It's valiant.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  4. Re:A fucking online petition... by msauve · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd like to know exactly why Twitter is a necessary component for notifying "you by SMS when your server goes down," which is the only useful example given. (Really, "bookmarking favorited [sic] tweets?" Someone wants to revisit them again and again? They must suffer from short term memory loss.) If your life depends on Twitter, you don't have one.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  5. A brief, but popular opinion by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's an internet cliche, but still applicable:

    And Nothing Of Value Was Lost

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  6. Valiant online petition? by flimflammer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Want to really send a message to Twitter against this policy? Stop using Twitter.

  7. Re:Crazy by jonwil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I suspect one of the biggest reasons why Twitter keeps changing their rules/policies/etc to block these "new ways to make Twitter useful" is because all these alternative ways to consume tweets dont put their "promoted tweets" and other forms of revenue raising front-and-center like the official approved methods do.