Is Twitter on the Right Path?
ByThings are definitely changing at Twitter HQ:
- Twitter bought Tweetie and intends to rebrand it “Twitter for iPhone”
- Twitter investor Fred Wilson said the days of creating apps that fill holes in Twitter’s functionality are over.
- Twitter has announced that they are building their own link shortener
To me, this means that Twitter has made a strategic decision to move into the customer-facing facet (for lack of a better word) of the business. I think that’s a wrong move for two reasons.
There is Much Work to do on the Back End
I still get ‘Twitter is Overloaded’ messages several times a week. The various Twitter APIs are disjointed and in some cases incomplete. In my opinion, there is So Much work that needs to be done on the back-end to turn it into a robust industrial-strength platform. Wilson evangelizes about building great apps on top of the Twitter platform, but that platform needs to provide a level of reliability, availability, and robustness that just isn’t there yet. TIme and energy spent on the customer-facing side is time and energy that won’t get spent shoring up the back end.
Killing the Goose
Twitter owes its popularity to the hundreds of little developers that found a need and filled it. Bit.ly, TwitPic, TweetDeck, etc all sprung up to fill holes in Twitter’s feature set. It was applications like these that made Twitter actually useful for me. Without them, I would have dismissed Twitter as an interesting toy. Millions of people adopted Twitter because of the work of little developers. These recent strategic moves by Twitter will discourage the very activity that made it successful.
There is a second aspect to this: It’s not just the functionality provided by these developers, it’s the evangelism. Hundreds (thousands?) of small developers hyped and promoted Twitter specifically because of they apps they developed. By discouraging these developers, Twitter is encouraging them to move elsewhere and take their evangelism with them.
I wrote this book for you to help you use Twitter in your business.
I agree, Dave, and would like to add one more, though it may reiterate what’s already been said. There’s also a certain involvement these developers feel and have created by developing the apps. By taking over the development of these apps, Twitter is basically sending the message “we don’t need you” despite the fact that, without these developers, Twitter would not have even one-quarter the exposure it enjoys now. So the developers take their evangelism elsewhere, as you pointed out in your last paragraph – and what competitor will rise and profit? One that understands and appreciates their involvement and enthusiasm.