consistency and ecosystem opportunities

[Ryan Sarver]

Hey all, I’d like to give you an update about the state of the Twitter Platform and hopefully provide some much requested guidance.

Since this time last year, Twitter use has skyrocketed.  We’ve grown from 48 million to 140 million tweets a day and we’re registering new accounts at an all-time record.  This massive base of users, publishers, and businesses is a giant playground for developers to build their own businesses on, and this means the opportunity has grown for everyone.

With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever.  As we talked about last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our own official iPhone app.  It is the reason why we have developed official apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps.

Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions.  For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter.  Similarly, a number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even more.  Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter.

A Consistent User Experience

Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network’s conversations.  We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.  Specifically:

 - The mainstream consumer client experience.  Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets.  If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience.  In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy.  This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user experience to third parties.  Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order to protect the user experience on our platform.

 - Display of tweets in 3rd-party services. We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are.   For example, some developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of  “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a tweet.

With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms.

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.

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.  

As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way.  This is already happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking.  According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.

In contrast, the number of successful applications and companies in the Twitter ecosystem that focus on areas outside of the mainstream consumer client experience has grown quickly, and this is a trend we want to continue to support and help grow.  Twitter will always be a platform on which a smart developer with a great idea and some cool technology can build a great company of his or her own.  And, with record user growth, there has never been a better time to build into Twitter.  

Some key areas where ecosystem developers are thriving:

 - Publisher tools.  Companies such as SocialFlow help publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time. 

 - Curation.  Mass Relevance and Sulia provide services for large media brands to select, display, and stream the most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or event.  

 - Realtime data signals.  Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of enhancing their own core products.  Klout is an example of a company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to generate reputation scores for individuals.  Similarly, Gnip syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third parties who want to use our real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge funds to ranking scores).  

 - Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights.  Companies such as HootSuite, CoTweet, Radian6, Seesmic, and Crimson Hexagon help brands, enterprises, and media companies tap into the zeitgeist about their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers using Twitter as a medium for interaction.

 - Value-added content and vertical experiences.  Emerging services like Formspring, Foursquare, Instagram, and Quora have built into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to their followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user acquisition, and traffic.  

A lot of Twitter’s success is attributable to a diverse ecosystem of more than 750,000 registered apps.  We will continue to support this innovation.  We are excited to be working with our developer community to create a consistent and innovative experience for the many millions of users who have come to depend on Twitter every day.

As always, we welcome your feedback and questions.

Best, Ryan

@rsarver

[Eric Mill]

"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."

"We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere."

I'm not sure you can say these things and simultaneously try to say you have a welcoming developer environment. All third party Twitter developers, no matter what they make, are now walking on eggshells, constantly at risk of offending Twitter's ideas of how users should interact with Twitter.

You may feel you "need" this consistency, but you don't. You want it, and are willing to make tradeoffs to get it. I just hope you realize how big those tradeoffs are, and how chilling it is for Twitter to decide that only certain kinds of innovation on the Twitter API are welcome.

-- Eric

[TJ Luoma]

Translation: "Thanks for building apps that made people want to use
Twitter. Thanks for putting up with us through the months and months
of instability. We'll take over from here. If you want to try to build
something around the fringes of Twitter, that's fine, but really, we
don't need you anymore. Goodbye."

Think I'm wrong? Here are the first 3 responses from people I follow on Twitter.

"Just FYI, Twitter doesn't want you to make client apps anymore.
http://j.mp/eTicd4"

"Unfortunately the handwriting in regards to 3rd party twitter client
seems to be plastered on the wall - http://t.co/SWAv1JE"

"People may infer that Apple hates 3rd party devs, but Twitter has the
giant brass balls to just come out and state it."

I guess in hindsight, forcing the move to oAuth was just the first of
many ways to eliminate developers.

Oh, and this?

> According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.

Gee, I wonder if that's because you add features to your own apps that
you don't give others access to. How many of them are using the
official Twitter apps as their primary way of reading Twitter?

That's my favorite statistic since Twitter released their own iOS app
with the ability to create new accounts (something you refuse to let
other developers do) and then talk about the wild success of mobile
account creation vs people who created an account via mobile before
(which, I guess, meant sending a post via SMS since that was the only
way to do it).

Welcome to the beginning of the end. Maybe not for Twitter, Inc. but
for developers.

Nice job releasing this on a Friday afternoon too… oh, and the same
day as the iPad launch? Huh. Interesting.

TjL

[Mike Champion]

Thanks for the clarification Ryan. Two questions:

1) Do you have a clear definition of what counts as a Twitter client?
Is it any app/service that posts updates to Twitter, including apps
like twitterfeed and Instapaper? Or is it only those apps that are
"primarily" clients? I'm certainly familiar with the challenge of
classifying apps ;) but wanted to know who will be covered by the ToS
Section 1.5 and how you think about "clients" given Twitter's updated
stance.

2) In section 1.5.A of the ToS it says:

"Your Client must use the Twitter API as the sole source for features
that are substantially similar to functionality offered by Twitter.
Some examples include trending topics, who to follow, and suggested
user lists."

Is the "Who to follow" functionality available via API from Twitter
for clients that want to offer this? I wasn't aware that it been
released as API but may have missed it on dev.twitter.com.

Thanks,

-mike

[Steve Streza]

Twitter continues to make hostile and aggressive moves to alienate the third-party developers who helped make it the platform it is now. Today it's third party Twitter clients. Tomorrow it'll be URL shorteners and image/video hosts. Next it'll be analytics and ads and who knows what else.

Maybe you guys should spend some time improving the core of the service (uptime, reliability, bug fixes, etc.) rather than ingressing on the work of the thousands of developers who made Twitter an exciting place to be.

Steve

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:18:24 -0700, Ryan Sarver <rsa...@twitter.com>
wrote:
> THE OPPORTUNITY FOR DEVELOPERS

> Some key areas where ecosystem developers are thriving:

>  - PUBLISHER TOOLS.  Companies such as SocialFlow [2] help

> publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user
> engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time. 

>  - CURATION.  Mass Relevance [3] and Sulia [4] provide services for

> large media brands to select, display, and stream the most
> interesting
> and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or event.  

>  - REALTIME DATA SIGNALS.  Hundreds of companies use real-time

> Twitter data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects

> of enhancing their own core products.  Klout [5] is an example of a

> company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data

> to generate reputation scores for individuals.  Similarly, Gnip [6]

> syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third parties who want to
> use
> our real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge
> funds to ranking scores).  

>  - SOCIAL CRM, ENTREPRISE CLIENTS, AND BRAND INSIGHTS.  Companies
> such as HootSuite [7], CoTweet [8], Radian6 [9], Seesmic [10], and
> Crimson Hexagon [11] help brands, enterprises, and media companies

> tap
> into the zeitgeist about their brands on Twitter, and manage
> relationships with their consumers using Twitter as a medium for
> interaction.

>  - VALUE-ADDED CONTENT AND VERTICAL EXPERIENCES.  Emerging services
> like Formspring [12], Foursquare [13], Instagram [14], and Quora [15]

> have built into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and
> valuable
> content to their followers, while, in exchange, the services get
> broader reach, user acquisition, and traffic.  

There's a common thread in most of the businesses you've listed as
"thriving" above. Nearly all of them interface with *multiple* networks
- Twitter, yes, but also Facebook, LinkedIn, and even MySpace.
HootSuite, for example, connects to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
MySpace, Ping.fm, WordPress, Foursquare and mixi. There's also Google
Buzz / Latitude, Tumblr, Posterous, Gowalla, Yelp, and I'm sure many
others. In short, I'd say there seem to be few businesses "thriving"
that have focused only on Twitter.

Last time I looked at the Alexa site rankings world-wide, Twitter was
number nine. It's a long climb to the top IMHO - Twitter needs to pass
Wikipedia and Baidu just to get to the point where Google, Yahoo!,
Microsoft and Facebook are in sight. Twitter is still growing, for sure,
but there are clearly some challenges for developers who only develop
for Twitter.
--
http://twitter.com/znmeb http://borasky-research.net

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- Paul
Erdős

[aartiles]

Is there any way to validate an idea before waste time developing it?

[howardk]

I'll ditto Mike Champion that it would be good to have a clear
definition of "client". I posted elsewhere ("Do new ToS conditions
apply to my app?" -- in retrospect it would have been better here)
that I'm just about to release a minimal "client" on the iPad, and
you've just scared the bejesus out of me because I don't know if I'm
suddenly verboten or not. Five months of work shot to hell?
Howard

[David W]

It seems a little confusing that you're basically saying "don't build
any more Twitter clients" and then call out the likes of Hoot Suite
and Seesmic as being examples of what people should be doing. At
heart they're just Twitter clients (that we shouldn't build any
more?) They also appear to be conflict with section 5e of the Ts &
Cs: "You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected from end
users of your Client to create or maintain a separate status update or
social network database or service."

I guess what confuses me most, is the motivation behind this
announcement? I mean sure, no-one wants apps out there that take
advantage of end users and give them a rough ride, but as you said
yourself 90% of users aren't getting that experience and as someone
else said; good apps will always bubble to the top.

I think it's incredibly disappointing to hear Twitter tell dev's not
to create clients any more. No developer sets out to create a bad
Twitter client. They set out to improve the Twitter experience,
because they believe they can and generally because they love
Twitter. Arguably Twitter wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't
for those that did exactly that.

Unless we've all misunderstood what's been said here, then I'd
question investing any time or money into the focusing on what are,
today, areas "outside the mainstream consumer client experience".
Sure go ahead and innovate in the areas Twitter tells you you're
allowed to... for now. What happens when Twitter sees the new
innovation you've just discovered is really popular? Do we get
another announcement telling dev's not to develop that stuff any more?

Like I say, I hope we've all misunderstood the message here (I really
do). I've no beef with the Ts & Cs. But please don't tell people to
stop developing clients that people work hard on and that users love.

> *A Consistent User Experience*

> Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and
> contributing to the network’s conversations.  We need to ensure users can
> interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.  Specifically:

>  - *The mainstream consumer client experience*.  Twitter will provide the

> primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and
> other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets,
> trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets.  If there are too many ways to use
> Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user
> experience.  In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly
> violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy.
>  This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user
> experience to third parties.  Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of
> API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order
> to protect the user experience on our platform.

>  - *Display of tweets in 3rd-party services*. We need to ensure that tweets,

> and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the
> same experience with tweets no matter where they are.   For example, some
> developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of
>  “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a
> tweet.
>
> With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service:http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms.
>

> *The Opportunity for Developers*

>  - *Publisher tools*.  Companies such as
> SocialFlow<http://www.socialflow.com/>help publishers optimize how

> they use Twitter, leading to increased user
> engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time.

>  - *Curation*.  Mass Relevance <http://www.massrelevance.com/> and
> Sulia<http://www.sulia.com/>provide services for large media brands to

> select, display, and stream the
> most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or
> event.

>  - *Realtime data signals*.  Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter

> data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of enhancing

> their own core products.  Klout <http://klout.com/> is an example of a

> company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to
> generate reputation scores for individuals.  Similarly,

> Gnip<http://gnip.com/>syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third

> parties who want to use our
> real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge funds to
> ranking scores).

>  - *Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights*.  Companies such as
> HootSuite <http://hootsuite.com/>, CoTweet <http://cotweet.com/>,
> Radian6<http://www.radian6.com/>,
> Seesmic <http://seesmic.com/>, and Crimson
> Hexagon<http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/>help brands, enterprises, and

> media companies tap into the zeitgeist about
> their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers using
> Twitter as a medium for interaction.

>  - *Value-added content and vertical experiences*.  Emerging services like
> Formspring <http://www.formspring.me/>, Foursquare <http://foursquare.com/>,
> Instagram <http://instagr.am/>, and Quora <http://www.quora.com/> have built

> into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to their
> followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user
> acquisition, and traffic.
>
> A lot of Twitter’s success is attributable to a diverse ecosystem of more
> than 750,000 registered apps.  We will continue to support this innovation.
>  We are excited to be working with our developer community to create a
> consistent and innovative experience for the many millions of users who have
> come to depend on Twitter every day.
>
> As always, we welcome your feedback and questions.
>
> Best, Ryan

> @rsarver <http://twitter.com/rsarver>

[Umashankar Das]

Dear Ryan,
   A very direct question. Is it being said that I cannot associate a brand new field like 'Discuss' with a tweet in my website?
Regards
Umashankar Das

--
Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list
Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

[Brainewave Consulting]

Would it be possible to get a set of user interface guidelines, like those that Apple provides to application developers, so that value add applications (such as TweePLayer.com) can conform consistently to the mainstream experience?

Mike Caprio

Principal and Lead Consultant

Brainewave Consulting

402 Graham Avenue PMB 211

Brooklyn, NY  11211

p: +1-347-269-0558

@brainewave

[Dewald Pretorius]

The most telling change in the Terms of Service occurred in sentence
#2 or paragraph #1 under section Rules of the Road.

It used to read: "We want to empower our ecosystem partners to build
valuable BUSINESSES around the information flowing through Twitter."

It now (since March 11, 2011) reads: "We want to empower our ecosystem
partners to build valuable TOOLS around the information flowing
through Twitter."

[Dustin Lennon]

The best I can locate for the "Who to follow" functionality from the Twitter API is under the User Resources and touching on GET users/suggestions and GET users/suggestions/:slug now how to come close to what Twitter places on their Who to follow page is beyond me.

-Dustin 
This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission.

[Duane Roelands]

Wow. "Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now
get lost."

This is appalling.

[Adam Green]

Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan),  so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference.

I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account?

Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app?

Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets?

If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple.

Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this.

--

Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list
Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

--
Adam Green
Twitter API Consultant and Trainer
http://140dev.com
@140dev

[Scott Wilcox]

Hello,

For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown.

Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term.

I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users. 

The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered.

Scott.

[Shannon Whitley]

I was hoping that Ryan was just a few weeks early for his April Fools'
post.

"Don't build clients?" It sounds like a bad joke.

I wrote a letter to Ryan on my blog in response to this post:

http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2011/03/a-letter-to-ryan-sarver/

I know you guys can't be serious about this. Stage a mutiny if you
have to, but don't let this boneheaded decision stand.

[Scott Wilcox]

Perhaps Ryan was urging folks to spend their time and money on creating innovative products and not on a new client that would probably not get a large user base due to the official clients marketshare?

[Adam Green]

I agree, Scott. Ryan didn't say you can't post tweets, but everyone heard that. Every tech blog repeated it. Ryan should take a minute and explain that it isn't true. That much would help a lot. He led by saying don't build a client. That is where people stopped reading.

I don't think he meant to tell people that apps can't tweet, but he did give that impression. Now he should come back and say, "Sorry guys. I gave you the wrong impression. Here are specifically the things you can still do." Don't just point to companies with $10M in VC funds each and say "No problem, just be like them."

These are API developers. Say it in terms of the API. Exactly which API calls are still allowed. If he says statuses/update is still allowed, then that answers the question. There is no ambiguity.

As for Twitter being free. Yes. The API is, but denying the value that products like Tweetdeck gave Twitter *for free* is denying the reality of how Twitter got to where it is. It is called a partnership. They give us raw materials, we add value to them. We all benefit.

[Ryan Sarver]

Mike, a client is one that recreates the twitter experience, or in your words the "primary" experience. So I don't consider Instagram or Foursquare in that group. It's apps that render a user their timeline.

Apps that post into Twitter are great and explicitly called out at the bottom of the email.

Hope that helps clarify.

Best, Ryan

--

Ryan Sarver

@rsarver

[Ellsass]

"a new client that would probably not get a large user base due to the official clients marketshare"

That would sort itself out without the need for Twitter to change their TOS -- the app would simply remain unpopular and eventually whither away. The fact that Twitter is moving toward disallowing clients indicates they see clients as a threat, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered with this.

[Ryan Sarver]

David, we are specifically talking about consumer clients. HootSuite and Seesmic are focused on a more enterprise or marketer audience as I called out at the bottom of the email.

Best, Ryan

--

Ryan Sarver

@rsarver

--

[Adam Green]

Thanks, Ryan. That helps a lot, and we should all repeat that to anyone who asks or says otherwise. So we have one answer. Tweeting in apps is still good.

Now, can you explain what you mean by  "It's apps that render a user their timeline." Please answer this. Is displaying a list of tweets forbidden or allowed?

If yes, is displaying a list of tweets *and* also providing functionality that lets the user post their own tweets allowed in the same app?

That is really all we need to know.

I won't ask you to explain why this isn't a "client". :)

[Ryan Sarver]

Adam, that is a totally incorrect characterization of the companies I listed in the email. A ton of those companies -- CoTweet, Klout, HootSuite, Socialflow -- sprung out of the ecosystem and were started on nights and weekends with no funding. Of course they have gotten some funding now as investors see them as great potential businesses.

Of course statuses/update is still allowed. As is statuses/user_timeline. We've added more policies and given guidance that we don't think there is a business in building consumer clients, but none of the APIs have changed.

--

Ryan Sarver

@rsarver

[Ellsass]

Scott, I don't think it's ludicrous to think that Twitter may
eventually pull the plug on, say, statuses/home_timeline, effectively
eliminating clients.

If Twitter's concern is ad revenue, all they'd need to do is add a
clause to their TOS specifying that all third-party clients must show
in-line ads or the quickbar or whatever else Twitter uses to generate
revenue. Then the issue is very clear for developers -- either
integrate Twitter's revenue-producing content into your client, or
don't make a client at all.

The fact that they seem to be going about this a different way, and
being a bit unclear as to what might happen to a client-only app,
leaves open the possibility that they simply want to close down the
market so the only access to one's timeline is via a first-party app.

[Scott Wilcox]

Highly doubtful that they would do that and they certainly haven't now.

Sent from my iPhone

[Adam Green]

They should insert ads into the stream, and say we can't remove them. That would be great. I have no problem with that, providing they treat us with respect. Give us an appeal process with warning if they don't like what we build. I have no problem with them wanting to make money from things I build. I want to make money from things they give me. I want everyone to make money.

Developers are not the problem. They are the solution. I can't help thinking there are people at high levels who sit around saying "How do we shake off these damned parasites?" If I'm wrong, maybe we can see a message from management that says "Here is a new initiative or dev program that will help you make money with the API. We love what you guys do so much we want to reward you. We want you to be part of a partnership."

That would be refreshing.

[Craig]

Ryan, you said in another post in this thread that statuses/user_timeline is still allowed. I'm curious how that jives with your second sentence here, "It's apps that render a user their timeline."

What will happen if an app falls into a gray area of being a client or consumer client? Will we simply have our Oauth tokens revoked, or will there be some sort of review process? Will their be a deadline for current client-only apps to find a way to fit the new TOS?

-Craig

[Raffi Krikorian]

in reading your blog post, i think you're misunderstanding what @rsarver wrote.  

the API is open -- i personally love seeing all the innovation around getting content into twitter (/1/status/update).  there is a cafe in france who's oven tweets whenever its done baking.  that uses the platform to get content in there.  there was a NYU project that enabled your plants to tweet when they needed water.  that uses the platform to get content into twitter.   then there are people who match tweets to context.  seeing twitter in action with a television show, or a newspaper article, or a conference, or a band -- that's how people really understand and get twitter.  they see it through the lens of what's happening in the world.

what @rsarver said, effectively, was building a business around simply rendering /1/statuses/home_timeline was probably-not-the-best-thing-to-do.  please go still innovate.  just don't bet money on simply making an API call to grabbing a user's home_timeline and rendering it.  that's thinking too small, and @rsarver is telling you that.

--
Raffi Krikorian
Twitter, Application Services
http://twitter.com/raffi

[Adam Green]

Raffi, do you really think a statement that insisted that all developers make sure that every single app presents tweets in exactly the same way, and that reminded those developers that Twitter shuts down hundreds of apps a day that fail to conform to the required presentation style, and that pointed to a TOS that went from 30 days warning to instant shutdown without any warning, would be read as Twitter urging everyone to "innovate"?

--
Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list
Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

[Shannon Whitley]

Thanks, Raffi, but obviously I'm not the only one reaching these
conclusions. If our interpretation is incorrect, then the policy
isn't clear.

Television shows, newspaper articles, and band pages are perfect
examples of places where a "Twitter client" might be useful. I could
build a full-featured Twitter client around a single news site and
that might be the perfect solution for that set of users. Under the
new guidelines, it sounds like I'd be shutdown.

On Mar 12, 6:39 pm, Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> wrote:
> in reading your blog post, i think you're misunderstanding what

> @*rsarver*wrote.

>
> the API is open -- i personally love seeing all the innovation around
> getting content into twitter (/1/status/update).  there is a cafe in france
> who's oven tweets whenever its done baking.  that uses the platform to get
> content in there.  there was a NYU project that enabled your plants to tweet
> when they needed water.  that uses the platform to get content into twitter.
>   then there are people who match tweets to context.  seeing twitter in
> action with a television show, or a newspaper article, or a conference, or a
> band -- that's how people really understand and get twitter.  they see it
> through the lens of what's happening in the world.
>

> what @*rsarver* said, effectively, was building a business around
> *simply*rendering

> /1/statuses/home_timeline was probably-not-the-best-thing-to-do.  please go
> still innovate.  just don't bet money on simply making an API call to
> grabbing a user's home_timeline and rendering it.  that's thinking too

> small, and @*rsarver* is telling you that.

>
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Shannon Whitley

> <shannon.whit...@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> > I was hoping that Ryan was just a few weeks early for his April Fools'
> > post.
>
> > "Don't build clients?"  It sounds like a bad joke.
>
> > I wrote a letter to Ryan on my blog in response to this post:
>

> >http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2011/03/a-letter-to-rya...

[Raffi Krikorian]

is the "twitter client" what's the most useful thing there?  i would think the algorithms and system to match tweets to that content is the most fruitful place for entrepreneurship?

--
Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
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Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

[Adam Green]

Can we get a definition of "client?" This seems to be where we are talking across each other.

1.  Twitter HQ sees a client as an app that displays *only* a user's home time line and allows the user to tweet, retweet, follow, etc.

2.  Developers see a client as an app that displays tweets from any source, including the home timeline *and* those that are curated by editors and algorithms, and allows the user to tweet, retweet, follow, etc.

I think to Twitter HQ, these are two very different things. I believe that this is what Ryan was trying to say. I believe that Ryan was trying to say, don't build apps that *only* do 1. You will have more luck with 2. Developers heard don't build apps that do 2 or you will be instantly shut down.

If Ryan hadn't combined his message with things that inadvertently also were perceived as a threat of instant shutdown as a result of an innocent misunderstanding of the rules, his statement would have been taken as advice, rather than a threat. I believe he meant well. He failed. He should keep trying until everyone understands. That is his job. Or it should at least be someone's job. Collectively the developers are worth the effort.

Hey, why not hold a conference, put everyone together, and talk until this is clear? You can afford it. We all need it.

Your future IPO investors aren't stupid. Well, at least not all of them. It is not just your revenue numbers they will see. It is lots of either happy or unhappy developers. We will raise your valuation. Keep saying that to Dick and the Board. They need to understand that.

[Orian Marx (@orian)]

What I am hearing by reading through this thread and the various
responses by @rsarver and @raffi is that Twitter is "helping"
developers of Twitter clients realize that their efforts will not be
economically fruitful. This is because Twitter HQ can't see how
someone can build a Twitter client that is economically viable, due to
one of two possible things: either their roadmap dictates that third
party developers will not be able to be economically viable or they
simply cannot envision any innovation in Twitter clients that anyone
would pay for.

It seems the former is more of the case here, but I don't put the
later out of the realm of possibility, which is unfortunate. As for
the former, whether Ryan's email was informative, helpful, harassing,
or threatening is really of little point relative to the actual
changes to the Twitter Terms of Service. I have worked hard for a year
on a Twitter client that I think delivers substantial innovation, and
I came to SXSW to unveil it. It delivers innovation that I believe
people would pay for, and my feedback here has been confirming that.
The changes to the ToS I believe may jeopardize the viability of the
various solutions I have provided to long-standing problems with
Twitter. The end result is that Twitter users will be deprived of
solutions to long-standing problems, I will be deprived of the
opportunity to grow a viable business, and Twitter will be deprived of
innovation in their ecosystem. This seems to be a lose-lose situation
all around, but obviously Twitter sees a forthcoming benefit for them
that outweighs this.

In the end what I really don't understand is that services such as
HootSuite and CoTweet suddenly become reclassified as "enterprise"
applications because they've figured out ways to generate revenue and
are therefor no longer Twitter "clients"? This all seems to be based
around an assumption that "people" won't ever pay to use Twitter in
some capacity, only "businesses". This, to me, is ludicrous.

@orian

> contributing to the network’s conversations.  We need to ensure users can

> interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.  Specifically:
>  - *The mainstream consumer client experience*.  Twitter will provide the
> primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and
> other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets,
> trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets.  If there are too many ways to use
> Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user
> experience.  In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly
> violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy.
>  This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user
> experience to third parties.  Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of
> API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order
> to protect the user experience on our platform.
>  - *Display of tweets in 3rd-party services*. We need to ensure that tweets,
> and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the
> same experience with tweets no matter where they are.   For example, some
> developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of
>  “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a
> tweet.
>
> With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service:http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms.
>
> *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.
>

[Umashankar Das]

How does one create innovative solutions, if Twitter enforces on us the stipulation, that, the view should be user oriented? It sounds like we're being told, you cannot reference tweets with content which is similar to a certain topic.

Imagine the earthquake in Japan, Now, it sounds like I cannot build an app/client/website, which shows tweets which have been sent talking about this unfortunate occurrence. I've already asked if one is allowed to discuss a particularly relevant tweet on this topic.

No response from Ryan. You could just say NO. That is a minimum norm of politeness.


Regards
Umashankar Das

[Raffi Krikorian]

why would you need a brand new verb?  what's wrong with "reply"?

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Umashankar Das <umasha...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Ryan,
   A very direct question. Is it being said that I cannot associate a brand new field like 'Discuss' with a tweet in my website?
Regards
Umashankar Das

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 1:48 AM, Ryan Sarver <rsa...@twitter.com> wrote:

Hey all, I’d like to give you an update about the state of the Twitter Platform and hopefully provide some much requested guidance.

Since this time last year, Twitter use has skyrocketed.  We’ve grown from 48 million to 140 million tweets a day and we’re registering new accounts at an all-time record.  This massive base of users, publishers, and businesses is a giant playground for developers to build their own businesses on, and this means the opportunity has grown for everyone.

With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever.  As we talked about last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our own official iPhone app.  It is the reason why we have developed official apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps.

Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions.  For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter.  Similarly, a number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even more.  Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter.

A Consistent User Experience

Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network’s conversations.  We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.  Specifically:

 - The mainstream consumer client experience.  Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets.  If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience.  In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy.  This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user experience to third parties.  Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order to protect the user experience on our platform.

 - Display of tweets in 3rd-party services. We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are.   For example, some developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of  “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a tweet.

With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms.

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.

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.  

As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way.  This is already happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking.  According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.

In contrast, the number of successful applications and companies in the Twitter ecosystem that focus on areas outside of the mainstream consumer client experience has grown quickly, and this is a trend we want to continue to support and help grow.  Twitter will always be a platform on which a smart developer with a great idea and some cool technology can build a great company of his or her own.  And, with record user growth, there has never been a better time to build into Twitter.  

Some key areas where ecosystem developers are thriving:

 - Publisher tools.  Companies such as SocialFlow help publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time. 

 - Curation.  Mass Relevance and Sulia provide services for large media brands to select, display, and stream the most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or event.  

 - Realtime data signals.  Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of enhancing their own core products.  Klout is an example of a company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to generate reputation scores for individuals.  Similarly, Gnip syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third parties who want to use our real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge funds to ranking scores).  

 - Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights.  Companies such as HootSuite, CoTweet, Radian6, Seesmic, and Crimson Hexagon help brands, enterprises, and media companies tap into the zeitgeist about their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers using Twitter as a medium for interaction.

 - Value-added content and vertical experiences.  Emerging services like Formspring, Foursquare, Instagram, and Quora have built into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to their followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user acquisition, and traffic.  

A lot of Twitter’s success is attributable to a diverse ecosystem of more than 750,000 registered apps.  We will continue to support this innovation.  We are excited to be working with our developer community to create a consistent and innovative experience for the many millions of users who have come to depend on Twitter every day.

As always, we welcome your feedback and questions.

Best, Ryan

@rsarver

--
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API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list
Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

--
Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
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[Lil Peck]

The fit hits the shan:
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ncl=dIuWKpXpxuNlqaMvVhpYJlcvG3xiM&topic=t

[Umashankar Das]

It has got to do with the nature of the way content is used. We will also have 'reply' to respond to the user. But, 'Discuss' is there to allow discussion on a certain topic.

Imagine the context of the earthquake in Japan. Some user wants to know about facilities being provided by relief agencies in Tokyo. The discussion will be useful for a group of people who reference a particular tweet.

Regards
Umashankar Das

[Raffi Krikorian]

hey adam.

i can't speak officially and definitively, however, we don't think there are as many business opportunities in making a piece of software that simply renders any of our timeline methods (/1/statuses/home_timeline,/1/statuses/mentions, lists, etc.).  that's your #1.

you're right, we do think there is a lot to be done with tweet summarization, curation, selection, matching, etc.  focus your efforts on that and just follow our lead with tweet rendering and interaction.  

does that help?

[Umashankar Das]

Hi Raffi,

  [you're right, we do think there is a lot to be done with tweet summarization, curation, selection, matching, etc.  focus your efforts on that and just follow our lead with tweet rendering and interaction.] 

This statement really helps me, personally. We're not doing tweet rendering. Interaction was a like 20% of the product we are working on here. We will try to think of a workaround.

If the above statement was part of Ryan's original mail, it would've helped us a lot. You've mentioned that your statement is neither official nor definitive. It would be really great if Ryan (as the head of Platform development) would discuss this.

Twitter's restrictions on usage of streaming and search api's were  a big bottleneck to our product. We've finally found a solution which does not overload twitter at all.

Please ask Ryan if he may repeat your statement above, mentioned by you. Appreciate you putting the time into this.

Regards
Umashankar Das

[Rich]

Hi Raffi

So if I'm reading what you wrote correctly, simple clients that just
display a timeline, post etc are thinking too small and there is no
business there, something I can agree with.

However many of us have, what I'd call a value added client. Sure we
have the basics of a client, but we have what I'd like to think are
added value services such as tweet scheduling, augmented reality of
tweeters around you, user streams, draft management, and so much more.
Are we to think that these are actually going to be fine for the time
being, so long as obviously we comply with the ToS.

What you guys seem to be saying though is don't build clients because
it won't make money, but some people seem to fail to grasp some of us
develop apps like this because we enjoy it... it's a hobby and a
passion and that doesn't always involve tons of profit. Services such
as Seesmic started out in the simple Client business, remember Twhirl,
etc. Sure they grew into something enterprise, but most of us start
out at the bottom and with the basics.

Richard

On Mar 13, 2:39 am, Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> wrote:
> in reading your blog post, i think you're misunderstanding what

> @*rsarver*wrote.

>
> the API is open -- i personally love seeing all the innovation around
> getting content into twitter (/1/status/update).  there is a cafe in france
> who's oven tweets whenever its done baking.  that uses the platform to get
> content in there.  there was a NYU project that enabled your plants to tweet
> when they needed water.  that uses the platform to get content into twitter.
>   then there are people who match tweets to context.  seeing twitter in
> action with a television show, or a newspaper article, or a conference, or a
> band -- that's how people really understand and get twitter.  they see it
> through the lens of what's happening in the world.
>

> what @*rsarver* said, effectively, was building a business around
> *simply*rendering

> /1/statuses/home_timeline was probably-not-the-best-thing-to-do.  please go
> still innovate.  just don't bet money on simply making an API call to
> grabbing a user's home_timeline and rendering it.  that's thinking too

> small, and @*rsarver* is telling you that.

>
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Shannon Whitley

> <shannon.whit...@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> > I was hoping that Ryan was just a few weeks early for his April Fools'
> > post.
>
> > "Don't build clients?"  It sounds like a bad joke.
>
> > I wrote a letter to Ryan on my blog in response to this post:
>

> >http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2011/03/a-letter-to-rya...

[Dustin Lennon]

I guess what I would like to know is since I'm a hobbyist, am I going to get my token revoked just because I write a client that is just for my use to better my skills in learning a specific programming language and share with others things I've learned.

-Dustin
This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission.

[Scott Wilcox]

Providing you don't participate in any spamming, I would think your application is perfectly safe.

[Raffi Krikorian]

Agreed.

[Jef Poskanzer]

I have a set of apps that basically just reproduces the official
Twitter user experience, exactly what Twitter says we should not do.
However, I add value by running on a platform that Twitter does not
support and is unlikely to ever support. I believe this should be
allowed and encouraged and would appreciate a statement to that
effect.

Furthermore, this is probably not the only exception to the "don't
just reproduce Twitter" rule. Please consider that there may be
entire areas of innovation that you have not thought of - that's why
it's called innovation.

[Rich]

Similar situation, although Raffi's response above is slightly more
reassuring.

[Craig]

Yes, Raffi's posts have made me feel a *lot* better about all of this. I hope his comments will be reflected in some way by an 'official' message from Twitter. It's not that I don't believe Raffi, I do, but it bothers me that Ryan or someone hasn't yet come back to explicitly confirm Raffi's comments (which, it should be noted, came with a disclaimer).

-Craig

[Raffi Krikorian]

i, personally, totally concur.  

what i don't think anybody can do is fully predict what platforms twitter will develop for next (although, you probably can make a guess as you see market-share play out).  what i would say is that, if you are building a twitter client, twitter, as a company, will probably hold you to a much higher bar than those who are not.  we do have a strong opinion regarding rendering, display, interaction, etc.

innovation, in my mind, is around doing something revolutionary, and not necessarily evolutionary.  there is plenty to do out there that is not evolutionary.

--
Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list
Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

[Lil Peck]

> With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service:
> http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms.
> 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.
>

Reviewing the API TOS at http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms, it
seems to be more generously worded than was Ryan's post.

[artesea]

Except every day I hear people go "I hate new twitter", "I want
feature y", "I wish it didn't do that".
I run a port of dabr, I don't do it for the money (no ads on the site)
I do it for the love of programming. Working out ways to get thumbnail
images in to the timeline. To have different displays depending on the
device or choice of the user. Being able to come up with an idea
whilst at work, and 2 hours at the keyboard when I get home to have it
working.

The number of users on my client is probably five, but I'm finding it
odd that Twitter insist that I'm wasting my efforts.
If you are so confident that you have a large enough market of the
timeline clients why stop competition?

Ryan
ps, I'm guessing that I'm counted in the 90% who "use" a twitter
client, but it's install on my android device any is only used to sync
up to my contacts.

On Mar 13, 4:38 am, Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> wrote:
> hey adam.
>
> i can't speak officially and definitively, however, we don't think there are
> as many business opportunities in making a piece of software that

> *simply* renders

[Scott Wilcox]

You still have the ability to change to a newly developed client if you want to.

Sent from my iPhone

On 13 Mar 2011, at 18:50, "Dewald Pretorius" <dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I used to be counted in the 90% until they defaced Tweetie, sorry,
> Twitter for iPhone with that moronic #DickBar that shoves irrelevant
> nonsense in your face. It's like yelling at you, "I KNOW YOU DON'T
> WANT TO SEE THIS AND HAVE NO INTEREST IN THIS, BUT HERE, TAKE IT
> ANYWAY. LEARN #WHATNOTTOSAYTOAFATWOMAN AND TRY TO
> #FARTLIKEJUSTINBIEBER AND OH, JUST WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, HERE'S ANOTHER
> STUPID ONE THAT'S NOT TRENDING AT ALL, BUT SOMEONE PAID US TO SHOVE IT
> IN YOUR FACE!!!!!!!"
>
> Are any of you guys developing a better Twitter client for iPhone,
> because I'll switch in a heartbeat.
>
> Oh...
>
> Wait....

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

On Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:49:45 -0700 (PDT), Dewald Pretorius

<dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I used to be counted in the 90% until they defaced Tweetie, sorry,
> Twitter for iPhone with that moronic #DickBar that shoves irrelevant
> nonsense in your face. It's like yelling at you, "I KNOW YOU DON'T
> WANT TO SEE THIS AND HAVE NO INTEREST IN THIS, BUT HERE, TAKE IT
> ANYWAY. LEARN #WHATNOTTOSAYTOAFATWOMAN AND TRY TO
> #FARTLIKEJUSTINBIEBER AND OH, JUST WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, HERE'S ANOTHER
> STUPID ONE THAT'S NOT TRENDING AT ALL, BUT SOMEONE PAID US TO SHOVE
> IT
> IN YOUR FACE!!!!!!!"
>
> Are any of you guys developing a better Twitter client for iPhone,
> because I'll switch in a heartbeat.
>
> Oh...
>
> Wait....

Dewald, you have to remember that Twitter isn't the only granfalloon
that one must deal with on the iPhone - there's Apple, too. If Steve
Jobs didn't like the #DickBar, how long do you suppose it would last?
;-)

--
http://twitter.com/znmeb http://borasky-research.net

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- Paul
Erdős

[Jef Poskanzer]

On my Android phone I have both the official Twitter client and
Twidroid installed. If they had more or less the same functionailty
and useability I would prefer to use the official client. However I
only use Twidroid, because Twitter's official app is inferior. I
could explain why in detail if anyone is interested, but it's not a
subtle matter, it's gross and obvious.

Twitter apparently believes that no one should bother making a plain
old timeline-displaying client because Twitter's official ones are all
you need. And yet even with Twidroid's prior example to copy from,
Twitter's official Android client is still unusable. I say this one
example shows that the new policy Ryan posted is at best premature.

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I've been holding off on the Android issue, but since you brought it up
...

I have a Verizon HTC Droid Incredible. I've tried *all* the Twitter
clients. I've tried the one that's built in, Peep, I've tried every
release of Twitter's "native" client. I've tried the mobile Twitter web
site in the browser. I've tried Twidroyd, Touiteur, TweetDeck,
HootSuite, Seesmic and probably a few others I've forgotten.

The most recent version of Twitter's native app is the *only* one of
that line that I consider even marginally usable. And yet in terms of
usability, it is still way behind Seesmic. Seesmic is the one I use. I'd
*love* to use Twitter's native app, but until it does everything Seesmic
does, it's not going to happen.

[Umashankar Das]

Relevance in  microblogging. Big opportunity but very difficult to define. Last i read, even google is stumped.

Cheers
Umashankar Das

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 1:21 AM, Dewald Pretorius <dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ed,

I don't have an issue with the size, placing, or color of the #DickBar
box. I have an issue with the fact that it shoves stuff in my face
that is of absolutely no interest to me.

Google got ads right. When your search results include a list of news
articles about the Japan earthquake, they don't show ads next to them
that yell, "#WHATNOTTOSAYTOAFATWOMAN".

On Mar 13, 4:18 pm, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <zn...@borasky-

>  http://twitter.com/znmebhttp://borasky-research.net

>
>  "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- Paul
>  Erdős

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:32:27 +0530, Umashankar Das
<umasha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Relevance in  microblogging. Big opportunity but very difficult to
> define. Last i read, even google is stumped.
>
> Cheers
> Umashankar Das

I don't think it's relevance that stumps Google so much as privacy.
It's a lot of work for users to control how much they reveal and to
whom, and the "Holy Grail" of "permission marketing" - timely, relevant
and personal - runs square up against that. I'm cynical enough to think
that the sole consumer benefit that has come from social media,
including Twitter and Facebook, is the ability to talk back to
granfalloons like the State Department, United Airlines and Google.
Everything else about the technologies simply reduces costs to
marketers, and those cost reductions are not passed on to consumers in
the form of less expensive or higher-quality products and services. ;-)
--
http://twitter.com/znmeb http://borasky-research.net

[Raffi Krikorian]

i don't think we've said its a waste of time, especially for something like dabr.  and, again, its not that we're stopping the competition -- we've said that if you are building a regular timeline client, we're going to be holding you to a higher bar.  in our opinion, its not a good -business- to be in.  i would love to see dabr, and other smaller, niche clients that are done out of enjoyment of coding, love of programming, etc. to continue!

[Dewald Pretorius]

Raffi,

Can you (Twitter) please get your message straight?

Here's what Ryan said, "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."

No you're saying something different. So, which is it?

[David W]

Hey Ryan - thanks for the response.
I'm sure enough people have made the same points now and you've taken
more crap than you'd care to. But just to clarify my comment, Seesmic
on WP7 is nothing but a client IMO.

Anywho - thanks for responding. At the end of the day Twitter's a
great place to develop and I'm sure most of the outcry stems from
disappointment and hopefully a misinterpretation.

dw.

On Mar 13, 12:51 am, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
> David, we are specifically talking about consumer clients. HootSuite and
> Seesmic are focused on a more enterprise or marketer audience as I called
> out at the bottom of the email.
>
> Best, Ryan
>
> --
> Ryan Sarver
> @rsarver <http://twitter.com/rsarver>
>
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 12:32 AM, David W <d_wy...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > It seems a little confusing that you're basically saying "don't build
> > any more Twitter clients" and then call out the likes of Hoot Suite
> > and Seesmic as being examples of what people should be doing.  At
> > heart they're just Twitter clients (that we shouldn't build any
> > more?)  They also appear to be conflict with section 5e of the Ts &
> > Cs: "You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected from end
> > users of your Client to create or maintain a separate status update or
> > social network database or service."
>
> > I guess what confuses me most, is the motivation behind this
> > announcement?  I mean sure, no-one wants apps out there that take
> > advantage of end users and give them a rough ride, but as you said
> > yourself 90% of users aren't getting that experience and as someone
> > else said; good apps will always bubble to the top.
>
> > I think it's incredibly disappointing to hear Twitter tell dev's not
> > to create clients any more.  No developer sets out to create a bad
> > Twitter client.  They set out to improve the Twitter experience,
> > because they believe they can and generally because they love
> > Twitter.  Arguably Twitter wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't
> > for those that did exactly that.
>
> > Unless we've all misunderstood what's been said here, then I'd
> > question investing any time or money into the focusing on what are,
> > today, areas "outside the mainstream consumer client experience".
> > Sure go ahead and innovate in the areas Twitter tells you you're
> > allowed to... for now.  What happens when Twitter sees the new
> > innovation you've just discovered is really popular?  Do we get
> > another announcement telling dev's not to develop that stuff any more?
>
> > Like I say, I hope we've all misunderstood the message here (I really
> > do).  I've no beef with the Ts & Cs.  But please don't tell people to
> > stop developing clients that people work hard on and that users love.

>
> > On Mar 11, 8:18 pm, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
> > > Hey all, I’d like to give you an update about the state of the Twitter
> > > Platform and hopefully provide some much requested guidance.
>
> > > Since this time last year, Twitter use has skyrocketed.  We’ve grown from
> > 48
> > > million to 140 million tweets a day and we’re registering new accounts at
> > an

> > > all-time record.  This massive base of users, publishers, and businesses
> > is

> > > *A Consistent User Experience*

> > > Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing
> > and
> > > contributing to the network’s conversations.  We need to ensure users can
> > > interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.  Specifically:

> > >  - *The mainstream consumer client experience*.  Twitter will provide the

> > > primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and
> > > other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets,
> > > trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets.  If there are too many ways to
> > use
> > > Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the
> > user
> > > experience.  In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly
> > > violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy.
> > >  This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user
> > > experience to third parties.  Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of
> > > API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in
> > order
> > > to protect the user experience on our platform.

> > >  - *Display of tweets in 3rd-party services*. We need to ensure that

> > tweets,
> > > and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have
> > the
> > > same experience with tweets no matter where they are.   For example, some
> > > developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead
> > of
> > >  “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of
> > a
> > > tweet.
>

> > > With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service:
> >http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms.
>

> > > *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.
>

> > >  - *Publisher tools*.  Companies such as
> > > SocialFlow<http://www.socialflow.com/>help publishers optimize how

> > > they use Twitter, leading to increased user
> > > engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time.

> > >  - *Curation*.  Mass Relevance <http://www.massrelevance.com/> and
> > > Sulia<http://www.sulia.com/>provide services for large media brands to

> > > select, display, and stream the
> > > most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or
> > > event.

> > >  - *Realtime data signals*.  Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter

> > > data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of
> > enhancing

> > > their own core products.  Klout <http://klout.com/> is an example of a

> > > company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to
> > > generate reputation scores for individuals.  Similarly,

> > > Gnip<http://gnip.com/>syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third

> > > parties who want to use our
> > > real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge funds
> > to
> > > ranking scores).

> > >  - *Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights*.  Companies such
> > as
> > > HootSuite <http://hootsuite.com/>, CoTweet <http://cotweet.com/>,
> > > Radian6<http://www.radian6.com/>,
> > > Seesmic <http://seesmic.com/>, and Crimson
> > > Hexagon<http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/>help brands, enterprises, and

> > > media companies tap into the zeitgeist about
> > > their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers
> > using
> > > Twitter as a medium for interaction.

> > >  - *Value-added content and vertical experiences*.  Emerging services
> > like
> > > Formspring <http://www.formspring.me/>, Foursquare <
> >http://foursquare.com/>,
> > > Instagram <http://instagr.am/>, and Quora <http://www.quora.com/> have

> > built
> > > into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to
> > their
> > > followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user
> > > acquisition, and traffic.
>
> > > A lot of Twitter’s success is attributable to a diverse ecosystem of more
> > > than 750,000 registered apps.  We will continue to support this
> > innovation.
> > >  We are excited to be working with our
>

> ...
>
> read more »

[Costa Walcott]

I don't know what "it's not a good business to be in" means. Ryan has been posting this statement numerous times on his Twitter account as well.

Is Twitter saying "We believe that a Twitter client will not make a lot of money. Go ahead and try but don't say we didn't tell you so if you make no money."? Or are you saying "Don't go into the Twitter client business because we may shut you down at will for any reason"?

The other statement I keep seeing is that we'll be held to a "higher bar". What does that mean? Does it mean new Twitter clients might be rejected the way Apple rejects new apps? Could existing apps be shut down because they fall beneath this "bar"? Will we be getting any documentation specifically telling us what the criteria are? Will Twitter be doing this for all clients, or just clients that exist on the same platform as an "official" app (iPhone, Android, etc)?  What about clients that don't exist as part of a business, such as open source apps?

-Costa

[Jef Poskanzer]

On Mar 13, 2:23 pm, Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> wrote:
>if you are building a regular timeline client, we're going to be
>holding you to a higher bar.

That is reasonable. However we have to wonder if Twitter's people
will/can be fair in applying this standard to 3rd party clients whose
selling point is 'like Twitter's but improved'. I gave Twidroid as an
example. Here's another one. The Twitter web interface for direct
messages is completely worthless - again I would be happy to dissect
it in detail if requested. I have considered deploying my own web
interface that is as close as possible to Twitter's except with a
working DM UI.

[Rich]

Hi Raffi

If that is the case then it's very reassuring to hear

[Ryan Sarver]

To be clear, Raffi is clearly articulating the situation. It's a complex thing and we can't expect to get it perfectly right the first time, so the dialogue and questions are great.

Raffi is also a much better communicator than I am :)

--

Ryan Sarver

@rsarver

[Dewald Pretorius]

Raffi, now is the right time to ask for a raise. Just saying...

On Mar 13, 8:09 pm, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
> To be clear, Raffi is clearly articulating the situation. It's a complex
> thing and we can't expect to get it perfectly right the first time, so the
> dialogue and questions are great.
>
> Raffi is also a much better communicator than I am :)
>
> --
> Ryan Sarver

> @rsarver <http://twitter.com/rsarver>

>
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Craig <cpa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, Raffi's posts have made me feel a *lot* better about all of this. I
> > hope his comments will be reflected in some way by an 'official' message
> > from Twitter. It's not that I don't believe Raffi, I do, but it bothers me
> > that Ryan or someone hasn't yet come back to explicitly confirm Raffi's
> > comments (which, it should be noted, came with a disclaimer).
>
> > -Craig
>

[Raffi Krikorian]

there are two things:

• twitter has started to specify what the core experience should be -- we have strong feelings around display and interaction;
• twitter is poised to move extremely quickly.

attempting to speak neutrally without any partisanship: IMO its a bad idea to create a business where you would have to bend at the whims of another organisation. the "higher bar" that we've been talking about is that scrutiny.

 

Is Twitter saying "We believe that a Twitter client will not make a lot of money. Go ahead and try but don't say we didn't tell you so if you make no money."? Or are you saying "Don't go into the Twitter client business because we may shut you down at will for any reason"?

The other statement I keep seeing is that we'll be held to a "higher bar". What does that mean? Does it mean new Twitter clients might be rejected the way Apple rejects new apps? Could existing apps be shut down because they fall beneath this "bar"? Will we be getting any documentation specifically telling us what the criteria are? Will Twitter be doing this for all clients, or just clients that exist on the same platform as an "official" app (iPhone, Android, etc)?  What about clients that don't exist as part of a business, such as open source apps?

-Costa

--

Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list
Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

[@siculars]

@raffi @rsarver, I wrote up my two cents earlier,
http://siculars.posterous.com/twitter-monoculture. I just don't
appreciate the direction you all are going in. @raffi, I spoke with
you at the CU recruiting event a few weeks back and I got to tell you
that if I were asked I would tell those kids to reconsider working at
twitter and possibly consider a Twitter competitor. you say "building
clients is ... Thinking too small" I would say your policy change is
thinking small and alienating your ardent supporters.

-Alexander

[Lil Peck]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 7:45 PM, @siculars <sicu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> @raffi @rsarver, I wrote up my two cents earlier,
> http://siculars.posterous.com/twitter-monoculture. I just don't
> appreciate the direction you all are going in. @raffi, I spoke with
> you at the CU recruiting event a few weeks back and I got to tell you
> that if I were asked I would tell those kids to reconsider working at
> twitter and possibly consider a Twitter competitor. you say "building
> clients is ... Thinking too small" I would say your policy change is
> thinking small and alienating your ardent supporters.
>

To which I would add, what is Twitter to arbitrate that which is and
is not "too small?" Has Twitter subscribed to the fallacious "bigger
is always better" philosophy?

How small is too small?

Less than $25 million in startup funds?

OR

One creative, fun loving person and their sweat equity?

[Matt Harris]

Innovation and development with the APIs are not being prevented. There have always been guidelines, and rules of the road so we all know what is and isn't allowed.

If you build a client you are touching the majority of Twitter features. The APIs allow you to do this, and Twitter and your users trust you to use them in the way the terms or service allow. The high bar covers your use of these methods, and how you present information back to the user. The ToS covers this but there are always situations where the application of them isn't clear. — Let's have those discussions with your use cases applied for the benefit of everyone.

The direction, and motivation here is transparency. You asked us what it looks like from the inside out. It can be uncomfortable, sure, but I believe it's better we all know how it looks on both sides.

Without us saying how we see it, how can we have these discussions?

@themattharris

[Adam Green]

Yes! Transparency!  That is what we are really craving. That is the subtext for every developer responding to this thread. What we all want is transparency about being shut down. Why does Twitter "revoke literally hundreds of API tokens / apps a week" as Ryan said? Is it for something obvious, like pumping out thousand of spam tweets or abusive follows, or is it for something innocent, like not putting the right text on a tweet button? I have never seen a description of an app that was blocked, except for a few loons like Edward H. What if you told us about apps that get blocked as examples, and explain what they did wrong? You don't even have to identify them by name. Just explain exactly what type of transgressions are causing rejection. That could calm people down.

Who doesn't meet the "high bar" and why? I know "high bar" has a lot of meaning to you Twitter guys, since you all use the same term (a real example of groupthink, BTW), but it means nothing to us. Tell us where this high bar is exactly, by showing examples of not reaching it. Then we can learn and improve, rather than guessing at what you mean.

Nobody here would bitch and moan if they didn't really want to learn something. Please, help us by giving us examples.

[Umashankar Das]

Privacy -: As I understand twitter, the data is public.[Other than private messages and protected users]. What is the concern here? I guess you are pointing to the credibility quotient of the owner of the tweet and hence his private information? 

Not wanting to challenge Google, but, we are developing a different algorithm. This thread sure has put a spanner on the works. But, we will work to get around it.

Cheers
Umashankar Das

[Luca Filigheddu]

Ryan,
we read the updated API TOS and I believe those make a lot of sense,
can't see anything "unusual" or "concerning".

I can't see any issue that could affect us as Twimbow (web based
social media dashboard) since our mid-term roadmap is way more than a
"twitter client" but I can clearly see what you mean in terms of
"consistency". I tried myself many clients that were trying to use the
content coming from Twitter in the wrong way and trying to give a
guidance makes a lot of sense, imho.

That said, I think there is a lot of space for innovation in the
client space, too. There are lots of features that could be helpful
for users in order to get the most out of the huge amount of
information they deal with everyday and we are definitely looking
forward to adding them to Twimbow in the following versions. Most of
them are around filtering and categorizing, all aligned with your TOS,
of course.

Let's keep this conversation going, I think it is very useful for
everyone.

Best,

Luca Filigheddu
CEO, Twimbow
@filos <http://twitter.com/filos>

[Taylor Singletary]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your comments as always. I can help clarify a bit around how clients will be held to higher standards.

Criteria we may examine include: is the application in tune with the spirit of the developer guidelines? Does the application refrain from storing username & password if it's using xAuth? Are tweets displayed with the proper attribution? Are the actions presented for the tweet appropriate in respect to it being a tweet? Does the application frame portions of our mobile site? Does it store non-public user data in a public way? Does the application provide a privacy policy? Is the client application paying for installation on mobile carriers?

The new terms also offer some examples that are reasonably specific:

A. Your Client must use the Twitter API as the sole source for features that are substantially similar to functionality offered by Twitter. Some examples include trending topics, who to follow, and suggested user lists.

B. You may not pay, or offer to pay, third parties for distribution of your Client. This includes offering compensation for downloads (other than transactional fees), pre-installations, or other mechanisms of traffic acquisition.

C. Your Client cannot frame or otherwise reproduce significant portions of the Twitter service. You should display Twitter Content from the Twitter API.

D. Do not store non-public user profile data or content.

E. You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected from end users of your Client to create or maintain a separate status update or social network database or service

Using a Twitter client is like using an extension of Twitter, and though the user interfaces may change we want to ensure that the user experience is consistent, whether it's consistency in the actions a user can perform with a Tweet, the way their private information is treated, or how slowly, quickly, and with what tact advertising flows or does not flow through the network.

Taylor

[Raffi Krikorian]

my statement here was not providing "small" on the size of the company, but rather, "small" on the size of the idea. to re-iterate, making a piece of software that simply renders home_timeline is thinking too small.

--
Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc
API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi
Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list
Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

[Adam Green]

But you will allow it, right? Even if it is thinking small, it will not be blocked? That is our problem. We can't separate business advice from a warning to prepare to be cut off. We can't help watching the hand that holds the kill switch. It makes it hard to hear what you say. Have patience, and keep explaining please. If something will not cause a ban, then say this explicitly to us. Don't just think it was implied.

[@smartwatermelon]

Ryan,

I've read through the rest of this thread and appreciate your
clarifications. May I ask a followup: How does the new policy vis-a-
vis basic functionality client applications apply to platforms on
which Twitter does not have an official client? For example, HP webOS.

Thank you.

[Pizik]

I get the distinct feeling of someone saying something that they do not really believe in.

Money makes puppets as ever.

[Derek Gathright]

My 2 cents...

The reason for the perceived mixed messages for some of us is because many developers don't, and never have been interested in doing Twitter development as a business.  I've created a dozen Twitter clients & apps over the last 5 years, some of which received enough users and press coverage that I could have attempted to turn it into a business, but I didn't. Why? Because it doesn't interest me. I do it for the challenge and the learning experience.

So, the things we hear Twitter saying are "Don't build clients anymore" as well as "Client apps make bad business".  Well, first, as long as the APIs are active and it's not against the TOS, I'm still going to build, develop, and use my own clients.  Second, I don't care that it makes "bad business", that's isn't a concern to me.  Third, developers can determine for themselves what seems like a smart business decision or not.  Fourth, frankly, Twitter Inc has never been regarded as an expert in monetization strategies.

Plus, this is info we already knew.  For the most part, building a company whose main product is a Twitter client hasn't been a good business decision for a few years (if ever, outside of a lucky few).  But on the other hand, there are still markets where it could be good business.  For example, where is the official Twitter client for webOS?  Messages like "Don't build clients anymore" and no official Twitter app on webOS does nothing but hurt the ecosystem for thousands of users.  If I were a developer for one of the popular webOS clients, I'd be pretty pissed right now.  Heck, as a webOS user I'm not thrilled.  I'm sure this is applicable to other ecosystems too.

The point is, Twitter should be more vocal about what it is going to do as opposed to coy suggestions to developers (which some perceive as threats) about what they shouldn't do.  Twitter is going to heavily focus on front-end user experiences across all platforms? Great! Leave it at that.  Let developers decide for themselves what are good/bad ideas.  Just arm us with the knowledge of your plans, and we'll worry about our own.

Finally, Twitter, you should be excited to compete with your developers. Much of the innovation over the years has been a product of the developer & user community.  Things like mentions & hashtags came from your users.  Features like saved searches, lists, trends, and ajax driven clients were inventions of developers years before they made it into Twitter.com.  Essentially, "New" Twitter is just a compilation of the best features from all the 3rd party clients.  Do not be hostile.  Do not attack them with your TOS.  Do not suspend tokens without working with the developer first.  Doing these things hurts the community, which in turn hurts you.  Your users are your product.  Not your platform.  Not your website.  Not your ads.  Your users.

- @derek

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Pizik <gm.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

I get the distinct feeling of someone saying something that they do not really believe in.

Money makes puppets as ever.

[Alison W]

Chucking in a few lines here too ...

On 14 March 2011 20:03, Derek Gathright <drg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I do it for the challenge and the learning experience.

Ditto. I worked up and 'beta'd' an archive service a while ago but
concluded that Twitter was likely to introduce its own service in that
area (given it had at that time lists and other services had suddenly
become available 'in house) so I ceased work on it but continued to
use it for my own interest. It is a one-way archive and can't be used
to forward to any other service plus it is comprised solely and only
of public data (tweets) of users who requested it. This -- to me --
says it should still be OK on the revised tos.

> For example, where is the official Twitter client for webOS?  Messages
> like "Don't build
> clients anymore" and no official Twitter app on webOS does nothing but hurt
> the ecosystem for thousands of users.  If I were a developer for one of the
> popular webOS clients, I'd be pretty pissed right now.  Heck, as a webOS
> user I'm not thrilled.  I'm sure this is applicable to other ecosystems too.

As another WebOS user here I've tried the 'official' mobile web
interface through the browser, and one of the other clients available,
but neither have given me the user experience I'd like or think could
be possible, so had been thinking of turning my mind to it.

But then on Friday night without any notice or explanation my access
*as a user* to twitter was suspended. As a learning experience it has
been 'interesting'; the system obliges a user to initiate a ticket
requesting reinstatement -- though over 24 hours later I've had
nothing back except an initial automated 'received' reply -- and a set
of timestamps on the ticket thread which are massively in error. I've
done nothing contrary to the TOS and though I was loathe to bring it
up here there is just the tiniest wisp of a thought at the back of my
mind of whether my development activities have been the cause? If so
this should be worrying to everyone here.

Anyway, for anyone who wants to know more you can read it on my blog
at http://www.alisonw.com/

But back on the main issue here, I can understand why Twitter wants to
make this move -- from a business pov it is a no-brainer to do so --
but given the sheer number of developers who have been encouraged in
the past to get involved with using the API to provide services it is
worrying that such a substantial revision has happened.

Alison Wheeler (AlisonW)

[Rob Aldred]

I agree, this is very short sighted of them to assume theirs some how better, or all people need.

I hate the Mac official client, they've bought Tweetie and made it worse, they've removed features and added a raft of bugs.

I use the original Tweetie on Mac and Seesmic on my Android.

Thankfully there are some decent programmers out there.

[Dewald Pretorius]

Here's one of the best and most thoughtful articles yet on this latest
ecosystem bomb:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/twitter-developers.html

[Ryan Sarver]

Adam, I don't know how else to make this any more clear. As long as you stay within the rules, your app will not get shut off. We would like to see, and recommend that, developers focus on bigger opportunities with more potential than writing another consumer client app.

--

Ryan Sarver

@rsarver

[Adam Green]

That is perfectly clear, Ryan.

The fact that people are still asking if they have Twitter's
permission to build a client and writing blog posts that say they
don't, shows that there is still confusion out there. My goal
throughout this has been to get simple statements like yours into this
list from Twitter HQ that eliminate the confusion. If someone at
Twitter could be given the task of saying what you just said every
time someone asks "Why can't I build a client?", or "Does this mean I
have to stop building my client?", the confusion will eventually be
removed. It may take days or weeks to reverse all the negative press.

In the future, please remember that every time you mention the
hundreds of apps you turn off each week developers stop reading
anything else. It is not a good way to start a conversation. Thanks
for your patience.

[David Newman]

Exactly how can someone develop a client for blind and partially
sighted people while staying within your new rules? Or are they stuck
with using a screen reader on the Twitter web pages (which are
notoriously inaccessible)?

Because speech synthesis is slower than reading, it will be necessary
to remove some of the proprietary notices and marks, rather than
repeating them all the time, so breaking term 4B. And exporting to
datastore to drive speech synthesis might break 4A.

I am not sure what 5C means in practice, but it would be important to
reproduce all parts of the Twitter service that make sense when done
through sound and typing, not vision.

As most disability aids are distributed through charities or social
service programs, people are paid to distribute them and teach people
how to use them. That breaks 5B.

It is common to let disabled users store pre-written pieces of text
they can send at a keystroke (or mouth blow if they cannot type on
normal keyboards). That would break 5D.

[Steve Eley]

On Mar 11, 4:18 pm, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
>
> With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways,
> a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever.  As we talked about
> last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our
> own official iPhone app.  It is the reason why we have developed official
> apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on
> their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people
> access Twitter are official Twitter apps.

Something doesn't sound right here. The official reasoning has some
contradictions in it:

* You're telling us that Twitter's own apps are topping the market,
and that an overwhelming majority of people are engaging with Twitter
using your own tools.

* In the same message, you say that people are confused about how to
engage with Twitter. You blame non-standard third party interfaces --
but if they're just a small minority of user contact points with
Twitter, wouldn't the impact be fairly low-level and mitigated by the
superior first-party experience?

* In that message and in subsequent followups, you tell us that client
applications will be "held to a higher bar." This seems to imply that
the standards for acceptance or rejection are qualitative; however,
the revised Terms of Service imply that they are objective. Which is
it? Is it "If you implement X, we'll cut you off" -- or is it "We
encourage you not to implement X, but if you do, we'll decide whether
you're any good at it?"

Fundamentally, here's what doesn't smell right to me: if the superior
quality of Twitter's first-party platform is winning in the
marketplace, as you say it is, _why bother with this?_ The perceived
threat to the user experience doesn't make sense. New users who don't
understand Twitter yet aren't going to pick up third-party clients;
they're going to follow the brand name. They'll go to Twitter.com, or
buy a book, or ask their friends. (If the books or friends are
confused, new API terms won't help.)

GOOD third-party clients don't compete with Twitter for new user
share. They pick up the power users who've used Twitter for a while
and want to use it more, or who have particular needs or tastes, or
who _like_ crazy non-standard designs. Shutting them down won't help
new users, and it won't enable current users to do things better.
It'll just turn power users into non-power users, or in some cases
into non-users. The most valuable users don't settle for 'good
enough.' If Twitter doesn't let them do things their own way, they'll
find a platform that does, or make one.

BAD third-party clients don't compete with Twitter at all. They just
don't have users. People don't use things that suck. For the most
part, things that suck are rarely even noticed. A million bad rock
bands aren't a threat to the Rolling Stones, and a million bad Twitter
applications aren't a threat to Twitter.

Finally, there's the damping effect on improvement. Most of the
innovation in Twitter did not originate within Twitter. Good ideas
climb upwards, and the best make it to the top of the canopy (the
official platform). Bad ideas become compost and lessons learned. If
you don't encourage this competition for sunlight, everything rots or
fossilizes. This is obvious. Smart people won't fail to consider it.

I think Ryan and Raffi know this. I think it's even possible that
they agree with some of it but can't say so. I can't imagine that the
backlash would take anyone at Twitter by surprise; it's inconceivable
that there was no discussion at all about the repercussions of telling
developers what they can and can't develop. Ryan and Raffi are
technical people, and they advocate for the geeks. Limiting the
freedom to create isn't the sort of decision that gets made by
technical people, or for technical reasons.

Something else is going on. This was a business decision, probably
made from the top in defiance of cost/benefit analyses from those who
built the platform, and wrapped up as customer advocacy. It doesn't
make _sense_, because the customers were never really at risk, but
then that wasn't the goal. Corporate policy statements always have to
tell you how they're making things better, even if no one believes it,
because an honest "We need to make a profit" leaves a bad taste in PR
mouths.

Even so, though... Something feels off. This doesn't make
_intrinsic_ sense, not just marketing sense. Someone is obviously
looking a few moves ahead, but what's the upside? Twitter's delivered
a major upset to developers, but they're at no real risk from them and
have relatively few immediate revenue channels to protect. The up-and-
coming revenue channels could have been worked into the API, and third
party clients pushed to leverage and grow them. Instead, they're
being blocked. "If you're winning, you don't need to change the
rules" is logic any businessman should understand.

So what's going on? What's really behind this?

Anyone?


--
Have Fun,
Steve Eley (sfe...@gmail.com)
ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine
http://www.escapepod.org

[jwinkle]

@steveE:

You've made a fantastic argument.  The "official reasoning" stated in the original message is clearly contradictory as you point out...I think any jury would tilt their heads on that cross-x. 

I've been sitting on this for a few days and can only make some distant observations. Being relatively new to twitter (and to the API -- and especially to the dynamic going on at present) I'm trying to put this in context of corporate motivation vis-a-vis the User Experience  with Twitter Clients.

The apps I use on my iphone and Mac are...let's say...very much possible to improve upon IMO.  It is not comprehensible to me why Twitter would want to squelch something new or different introduced  with regards to the User eXperience...especially for new users...with Twitter clients.  As a programmer...it's the first thing I wanted to do -- and the whole reason I started digging in the API in the first place a few weeks ago....to bring something new to the table that I don't see there.  It seems many people on this site feel similarly with regards to existing Clients.  Innovation is far from over on the Client side...and...seemingly...should be encouraged as many posters have pointed out.

There is justifiable motivation for Twitter to capitalize on their service...it is brilliant, categorically historical, and as a comm channel blurs the lines between casual chat and causality in real-world events of true historical nature.  But is Twitter trying to put its own clients "on every desk and in every home?"

My personal opinion is that the threat to the company is not in the access to the twitter stream backend (data mining, streams, etc...)...it's to the frontend (the firehose backend is being 3rd partied already a la gnip.com).  The user still has to enter 160 chars --somehow/where/way, and  if that stream were ever diverted --  game over.  A Twitter client is that front end.  The user entering text into a client is the sine qua non of Twitter.  That's not a local firehose per user...that's a sparse tweet ... once or twice a minute peak.  But the Twitter client frontend is the gateway, and it's not that hard to code a basic Twitter client via the API, so there can be a lot of Twitter clients out there...and some of them might be better than Twitter's.   Is this what they are trying to control?

For Google (search) ...it is to use their search engine and free services to bring you to advertising.  If users started using another search engine, Google doesn't get data.  Google's search engine has pretty good legs so far...and it's proprietary of course.  You enter search text on any handful of standard web browsers.

For Facebook...network people together to share pics and relationship status.  You could probably make facebook server code OSS...it's the existing network in-place that keeps people there...it was first and it has a brand.  Facebook gets a lot of traffic on their web clients...and a lot of data on what people say to each other.  You mostly post your status via Facebook's clients:  web pages via standard browsers or their mobile apps.

For Twitter...there is an in-place network all right, but you can post your status (160 *golden* characters) via any number of clients.

Is this really the threat??  If so...it would seem that most of the API accessibility would just steadily disappear over time...

@jameswinkle

[Jef Poskanzer]

On Mar 16, 10:56 pm, jwinkle <jameswin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For Facebook...network people together to share pics and relationship
> status.  You could probably make facebook server code OSS...it's the
> existing network in-place that keeps people there...it was first and it has
> a brand.

Actually the only reason Diaspora is getting any traction at all as a
Facebook replacement is that Facebook management consistently act like
dickheads. Twitter take note.

[Caliban Darklock]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Dewald Pretorius <dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Would you mind taking a stab at clarifying Section 5.E of the new TOS,
> which reads, "You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected

> from end users of your Client to create or maintain a separate status

> update or social network database or service."

I believe this primarily exists to say "you may not use our own API to
compete with us."

But it does seem overly broad.

[Ryan Sarver]

Steve, thanks for the email. Some inline responses below...

--

Ryan Sarver

@rsarver

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:24 PM, Steve Eley <sfe...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mar 11, 4:18 pm, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
>
> With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways,
> a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever.  As we talked about
> last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our
> own official iPhone app.  It is the reason why we have developed official
> apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on
> their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people
> access Twitter are official Twitter apps.

Something doesn't sound right here.  The official reasoning has some
contradictions in it:

* You're telling us that Twitter's own apps are topping the market,
and that an overwhelming majority of people are engaging with Twitter
using your own tools.

90% logging in once a month is one measurement. We can't currently measure tweet views which would be the best measurement of consumption. I wouldn't say that Twitter is the overwhelming majority of the way people consume twitter, but it's the majority and trending in that favor.

 

* In the same message, you say that people are confused about how to
engage with Twitter. You blame non-standard third party interfaces --
but if they're just a small minority of user contact points with
Twitter, wouldn't the impact be fairly low-level and mitigated by the
superior first-party experience?

While Twitter owned and operated clients are the majority, but not the overwhelming majority, there is still a lot of confusion for mainstream users across the fractured experiences.

 

* In that message and in subsequent followups, you tell us that client
applications will be "held to a higher bar."  This seems to imply that
the standards for acceptance or rejection are qualitative; however,
the revised Terms of Service imply that they are objective.  Which is
it?  Is it "If you implement X, we'll cut you off" -- or is it "We
encourage you not to implement X, but if you do, we'll decide whether
you're any good at it?"

Clearly people have taken this to mean something I didn't intend. When I said "higher bar" I meant that relative to the previous TOS. I don't mean it in an arbitrary, qualitative way. While we don't recommend it as a business, we aren't going to be turning off clients as long as they stay within the articulated TOS. Obviously there are a number of smaller international markets, use cases and devices that our clients don't address and these are great for niche clients.

 

Fundamentally, here's what doesn't smell right to me: if the superior
quality of Twitter's first-party platform is winning in the
marketplace, as you say it is, _why bother with this?_  The perceived
threat to the user experience doesn't make sense.  New users who don't
understand Twitter yet aren't going to pick up third-party clients;
they're going to follow the brand name.  They'll go to Twitter.com, or
buy a book, or ask their friends.  (If the books or friends are
confused, new API terms won't help.)

Why bother? Because on a weekly, if not daily basis, we get asked by developers, entrepreneurs, angels and VCs for "more guidance and transparency". If we know we are going to invest heavily in a space and feel that a consistent user experience is key to onboarding more new users and optimizing the network effects, then we need to communicate that to everyone. The email was meant to be blunt, and we know it's not a message that everyone wants to hear. Some people have taken acception to the bluntness of the language, but I think brutal honesty is better than dancing around the topic with niceties.

 

GOOD third-party clients don't compete with Twitter for new user
share.  They pick up the power users who've used Twitter for a while
and want to use it more, or who have particular needs or tastes, or
who _like_ crazy non-standard designs.  Shutting them down won't help
new users, and it won't enable current users to do things better.
It'll just turn power users into non-power users, or in some cases
into non-users.  The most valuable users don't settle for 'good
enough.'  If Twitter doesn't let them do things their own way, they'll
find a platform that does, or make one.

I totally agree, hence why I called out applications focused on the enterprise market and marketers like HootSuite, CoTweet and Seesmic. And again, to be really clear, we aren't shutting down any clients, even ones focused on the mainstream consumer experience. However, if you're going to build a "client", we would like to see more of them like CoTweet that focus on a specific audience with specific needs not addressed by the core Twitter clients.

 

BAD third-party clients don't compete with Twitter at all.  They just
don't have users.  People don't use things that suck.  For the most
part, things that suck are rarely even noticed.  A million bad rock
bands aren't a threat to the Rolling Stones, and a million bad Twitter
applications aren't a threat to Twitter.

That is mostly true, but we do know of instances where clients were paying for installs to inorganically grow their audience. Once a user get's used to an experience, even if its bad, a lot of them stick because it's familiar. This is why we added a new clause that prevents any clients from buying market share as users should organically find and use the best ones.

 

Finally, there's the damping effect on improvement.  Most of the
innovation in Twitter did not originate within Twitter.  Good ideas
climb upwards, and the best make it to the top of the canopy (the
official platform).  Bad ideas become compost and lessons learned.  If
you don't encourage this competition for sunlight, everything rots or
fossilizes.  This is obvious.  Smart people won't fail to consider it.

We agree with this. A lot of the primitives that we use today like @names, #tags and RTs all came from users. However, they weren't born out of clients. They were born out of users leveraging the power of Twitter as a communications medium. And again, we aren't shutting down clients that comply with the rules, we just wanted to give guidance that it isn't an area you should expect to grow a large audience and that we believe a consistent core experience optimizes network effects which benefits everyone. This doesn't mean that innovation is dead...

Hope those answers help clarify and add some context.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Best, Ryan

 

[Ryan Sarver]

Dewald, sorry if this isn't clear. The intent is to allow developers to still post to other 3rd party networks like Facebook, Identica, LinkedIn, etc. What we don't want to allow is for a client to use our content to build their own competing status service and by sending content to services that the user did not intend to send them to.

Users trust us with their content and we want them to have an idea of where the content goes and how it is going to be used.

Hope that helps clarify.

Ryan

--

Ryan Sarver

@rsarver

On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 8:43 AM, Dewald Pretorius <dpr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Taylor,

Would you mind taking a stab at clarifying Section 5.E of the new TOS,

which reads, "You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected

from end users of your Client to create or maintain a separate status

update or social network database or service."

It appears to say that a Client is not allowed to offer its users the
ability to create status updates on other services (StatusNet,
Facebook, etc.). Had it not been for the "or other data collected from
end users" I would have interpreted it that one cannot use any Twitter
Content (user data and tweets obtained via the Twitter API) and feed
that Twitter Data into other and/or competing social network
platforms. But, "or other data collected from end users" seems to
suggest that one cannot so much as offer any support for any other and/
or competing social network platform. Meaning, if you have a Client,
you can support Twitter OR Everything Else, not both.


On Mar 14, 11:12 am, Taylor Singletary <taylorsinglet...@twitter.com>

> > On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 12:07 AM, Matt Harris <mhar...@twitter.com> wrote:
>
> >> Innovation and development with the APIs are not being prevented. There
> >> have always been guidelines, and rules of the road so we all know what is
> >> and isn't allowed.
>
> >> If you build a client you are touching the majority of Twitter features.
> >> The APIs allow you to do this, and Twitter and your users trust you to use
> >> them in the way the terms or service allow. The high bar covers your use of
> >> these methods, and how you present information back to the user. The ToS
> >> covers this but there are always situations where the application of them
> >> isn't clear. — Let's have those discussions with your use cases applied for
> >> the benefit of everyone.
>
> >> The direction, and motivation here is transparency. You asked us what it
> >> looks like from the inside out. It can be uncomfortable, sure, but I believe
> >> it's better we all know how it looks on both sides.
>
> >> Without us saying how we see it, how can we have these discussions?
>
> >> @themattharris
>

> >> On Mar 13, 2011, at 20:21, Lil Peck <lilp...@gmail.com> wrote:

[O O O]

All of this would have been much easier if they would have stayed with my start up of Twitter

[Jimmy]

The thing that is often lost in the discussion about the API and
innovating is the fact that third party clients innovated
significantly in the UI and UX of Twitter. In some cases Twitter's own
clients lag behind considerably. Things like @ completion, hashtag
completion come to mind as features added in third party clients.

I would hate to see the mobile Twitter UX stagnate as we have to wait
for Twitter official clients to implement all the great ideas around
improving UI and UX.

Another issue is that of platforms. Third party developers are the
first ones to reach any new platform with an app. Do we really need to
wait for Twitter to decide a platform is big enough to be worth their
time? Because this notion that reproducing the mainstream client
experience is something only Twitter can do is at odds with that
notion.

[onuekwusi chidi]

"If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to
serve
your user base,"

"Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of
API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in
order
to protect the user experience on our platform. "
Does this mean twitter is no longer granting request Tokens to Third
Party Applications?....cause i keep getting a 401 when i try to get
one...
--Chidi

On Mar 11, 9:18 pm, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
> Hey all, I’d like to give you an update about the state of the Twitter
> Platform and hopefully provide some much requested guidance.
>
> Since this time last year, Twitter use has skyrocketed.  We’ve grown from 48
> million to 140 million tweets a day and we’re registering new accounts at an
> all-time record.  This massive base of users, publishers, and businesses is
> a giant playground for developers to build their own businesses on, and this
> means the opportunity has grown for everyone.

>
> With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways,
> a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever.  As we talked about
> last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our
> own official iPhone app.  It is the reason why we have developed official
> apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on
> their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people
> access Twitter are official Twitter apps.
>

> Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the
> different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients
> display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions.  For
> example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a
> way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their
> own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter.  Similarly, a
> number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested
> users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even
> more.  Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets
> the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be
> able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone
> else across Twitter.
>
> *A Consistent User Experience*
> Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and
> contributing to the network’s conversations.  We need to ensure users can
> interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.  Specifically:
>  - *The mainstream consumer client experience*.  Twitter will provide the
> primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and
> other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets,
> trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets.  If there are too many ways to use
> Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user
> experience.  In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly
> violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy.
>  This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user
> experience to third parties.  Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of
> API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order
> to protect the user experience on our platform.
>  - *Display of tweets in 3rd-party services*. We need to ensure that tweets,
> and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the
> same experience with tweets no matter where they are.   For example, some
> developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of
>  “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a
> tweet.
>
> With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service:http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms.
>
> *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.
>
> 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.
>
> As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where
> every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way.  This is already
> happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps
> that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking.  According to
> our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly
> basis.
>
> In contrast, the number of successful applications and companies in the
> Twitter ecosystem that focus on areas outside of the mainstream consumer
> client experience has grown quickly, and this is a trend we want to continue
> to support and help grow.  Twitter will always be a platform on which a
> smart developer with a great idea and some cool technology can build a great
> company of his or her own.  And, with record user growth, there has never
> been a better time to build into Twitter.
>
> Some key areas where ecosystem developers are thriving:
>  - *Publisher tools*.  Companies such as
> SocialFlow<http://www.socialflow.com/>help publishers optimize how
> they use Twitter, leading to increased user
> engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time.
>  - *Curation*.  Mass Relevance <http://www.massrelevance.com/> and
> Sulia<http://www.sulia.com/>provide services for large media brands to
> select, display, and stream the
> most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or
> event.
>  - *Realtime data signals*.  Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter
> data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of enhancing
> their own core products.  Klout <http://klout.com/> is an example of a
> company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to
> generate reputation scores for individuals.  Similarly,
> Gnip<http://gnip.com/>syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third
> parties who want to use our
> real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge funds to
> ranking scores).
>  - *Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights*.  Companies such as
> HootSuite <http://hootsuite.com/>, CoTweet <http://cotweet.com/>,
> Radian6<http://www.radian6.com/>,
> Seesmic <http://seesmic.com/>, and Crimson
> Hexagon<http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/>help brands, enterprises, and
> media companies tap into the zeitgeist about
> their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers using
> Twitter as a medium for interaction.
>  - *Value-added content and vertical experiences*.  Emerging services like
> Formspring <http://www.formspring.me/>, Foursquare <http://foursquare.com/>,
> Instagram <http://instagr.am/>, and Quora <http://www.quora.com/> have built
> into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to their
> followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user
> acquisition, and traffic.
>
> A lot of Twitter’s success is attributable to a diverse ecosystem of more
> than 750,000 registered apps.  We will continue to support this innovation.
>  We are excited to be working with our developer community to create a
> consistent and innovative experience for the many millions of users who have
> come to depend on Twitter every day.
>
> As always, we welcome your feedback and questions.
>
> Best, Ryan
> @rsarver <http://twitter.com/rsarver>

[howardk]

I've just shipped an iPad app (http://bit.ly/f78dpr) that's about as
simple a Twitter client as you could get. I mentioned my concerns
about shipping this under the new ToS in the thread "Do new ToS
conditions apply to my app?". This app, simple and non-commercial as
it is, was a wonderfully creative effort for me, and I'd hate to see
it and other similar efforts disallowed.

I'm still confused, after reading all the above verbiage, whether this
app is OK or not from Twitter's perspective. Can anybody enlighten me
on this?
Thanks,
Howard

On Mar 12, 4:59 pm, Ellsass <cpa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Scott, I don't think it's ludicrous to think that Twitter may
> eventually pull the plug on, say, statuses/home_timeline, effectively
> eliminating clients.
>
> If Twitter's concern is ad revenue, all they'd need to do is add a
> clause to their TOS specifying that all third-party clients must show
> in-line ads or the quickbar or whatever else Twitter uses to generate
> revenue. Then the issue is very clear for developers -- either
> integrate Twitter's revenue-producing content into your client, or
> don't make a client at all.
>
> The fact that they seem to be going about this a different way, and
> being a bit unclear as to what might happen to a client-only app,
> leaves open the possibility that they simply want to close down the
> market so the only access to one's timeline is via a first-party app.
>
>
>
> Scott Wilcox wrote:
> > Hello,
>
> > For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown.
>
> > Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term.
>
> > I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users.
>
> > The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered.
>
> > Scott.
>
> > On 13 Mar 2011, at 00:16, Adam Green wrote:
>
> > > Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan),  so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference.
>
> > > I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account?
>
> > > Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app?
>
> > > Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets?
>
> > > If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple.
>
> > > Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this.
>
> > > On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Duane Roelands <duane.roela...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Wow.  "Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter.  Now
> > > get lost."
>
> > > This is appalling.