
Twitter Launches “Twitter Certified Products” - uptown
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/29/twitter-launches-twitter-certified-products-partners-with-datasift-gnip-hootsuite-others/
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cs702
Looking at this as a complete outsider (and ignoring for a moment that the
people running and backing Twitter are _very_ smart and talented), Twitter's
big-picture strategy seems rather similar to the plan hatched by the
Underpants Gnomes of South Park[1]:

    
    
      Phase 1: Collect users and developers (with a free service)
      Phase 2: ?
      Phase 3: Profit
    

Twitter seems to be smack in the middle of that awkward phase 2: they have a
lot of users and developers, and now they need to figure out how to leverage
the valuable social graph they've acquired to build a profitable, sustainable,
defensible business. That's NOT easy.

I wish them success.

\--

[1] [http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/151040/the-
underpants-...](http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/151040/the-underpants-
business)

~~~
cookiecaper
Maybe they should just start courting some of the big media companies. I'm
sure neither Time Warner or News Corp wants to go back to the days when they
had to fill airtime with real content instead of reading tweets.

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mrgoldenbrown
The last sentence of this article has an obvious typo - it says "...the
company argues that they don’t add enough value for its users." That sentence
only makes sense if you replace "users" with "Twitter's bank account."

~~~
tomjen3
Agreed. Twitter needs to die already.

~~~
TheGateKeeper
So does Facebook, and Myspace.

~~~
untog
Does HN automatically hate any tech company as soon as it becomes successful?

~~~
a-priori
The key thing about things like Twitter and, especially, Facebook that makes
them get such hate, I think, is that as a user, you are their product -- not
their customer. They don't get money from you, so their interests are not
aligned with yours. This leads to a lot of perverse behaviour in the interests
of extracting value from your use of their site.

This is in contrast with other services (like Github, which someone
mentioned), whose interests are aligned with yours. They want your experience
to be good so that you continue to give them money.

~~~
001sky
^^This is a nice, clear, and level headed response.

Combine conflict of interest and lack of transparency, and you can explain a
lot of problems.

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dtsingletary
When there are thousands upon thousands of 'partners' integrating their API,
how does a consumer, or a business, sift through that shit and find the gems?

How does Twitter even know about or be aware of apps that are either violating
their terms (before or after any terms change), or are awesome and solve a
unique problem?

They're big enough now that this is a required means of developer
communication, verification, and management.

This applies to any platform after a good length of time and adoption. It
probably should have come sooner-- it may have even better telegraphed their
hand before the blog posts did.

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ONE37
I wrote this a little earlier regarding the announcement:

"Working toward the sustenance of some inexplicable business jargon?
Fortunately for you, Twitter has yet to define a robust plan to subvert your
work. So, to alay any budding concerns, you get a plucky blue badge for your
product."

Ridiculous.

([http://one37.net/29/8/2012/twitter-launches-certified-
produc...](http://one37.net/29/8/2012/twitter-launches-certified-products-
business-jargon))

------
potatolicious
"Thanks for figuring out for us what monetizes and what doesn't!" -- Twitter
(and Craigslist, apparently)

~~~
001sky
Imagine if MLB thought AAA ball was going to cannibalize its audience? What
does that say about Major Leaugue's future?

Zuckeberg did the smart thing with IG, his just bought it ! (at 1% of his
company value = NBD). Why doesn't twitter just roll-up some of the better
products? And keep the collabritive ecosystem? Can they not "afford it"?

The valuation gap between twitter (at what $6-7B?) and its ecosystem players
is so vast...something doesn't add up to why they should have such fear.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Tweetdeck had enough users before Twitter bought them that they could have
started a competing service. And due to the loose nature of Twitter's social
graph, it may have been just as useful to the users. I think that sent a scare
through the company on the dangers of not being the touch point with the
company.

~~~
001sky
Just hit google real quick, and found this headline on that _Twitter Buys
TweetDeck For $40 Million | TechCrunch_ I think you're probably right in terms
of the mental framing...but, back of the envelope, 10x tweetdecks = 400m = 6%
equity stake in Twitter $7B. Its not a bad biz model. Twitter has 2x orders of
magnitude more mkt value. They should put that to work.[1]

[1] Or they dont, and/or cant issue shares anywhere near that price after the
FB ipo collapse.

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webwanderings
Their road map and this strategy cements the opinion that Twitter is a media
company and not a social-networking platform.

The question each user of Twitter now has to ask themselves, how and why they
are using Twitter on the daily basis.

As a business itself, Twitter is clearly providing an outlook into what it
expects its user community to be, i.e, the users are the clear product to be
sold to Twitter's customers and clients.

The old model of selling Ads to the free-users, no longer works. The free-
users clearly need to be sold to the clients and customers as well.

So if you are a free-user as a business yourself, than you are in a good
company at Twitter. If you are a free-user as a consumer (consuming content
generated by others) than you are a product and you have to be ready to be
sold. But if you are a free-user only trying to have social-conversation with
friends and strangers, than you are an idiot interfering in other people's
business.

There is nothing negative here, it just all makes sense.

------
waterlesscloud
From Failwhale to Stamp Of Quality in a few short years.

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tehwebguy
Twitter can't find profitability, but these companies can. Maybe Twitter can
finally make a buck by taxing them?

~~~
guywithabike
The problem is that there's not enough money there. Twitter needs 12 - 13
figures, not the paltry 6-7 of these "partners".

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kristianc
Well, at least Klout didn't get a badge. That really would have taken the
cake.

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orangethirty
Does twitter have an in house R&D department not focused on improving twitter,
but on exploring other options?

~~~
alpb
Haha, couldn't agree more! It is age of the marketers not the geeks, it seems.
Dustin's comment made me remember it <http://dcurt.is/twitters-graph>

~~~
orangethirty
If I were running twitter, I would be moving towards making twitter more open.
I would not stop until diapers could tweet that the baby needs to be changed.
I would also hire every coder I could find and give them free will over what
to develop and research. Then we would test all of the ideas on the incredible
user base twitter has. There is no way they cant hit gold multiple times with
such approach. But no, they prefer to "defend" their property. Twitter is
going the way of yahoo. Sad.

~~~
stephengillie
IFTTT: If This Then Twitter

~~~
orangethirty
:D

    
    
        if(twitter)
            R&D ? profit | break
        else
            print "one more round, people"

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flocial
This maybe wild conjecture but I think the crux of the issue is that Twitter
feels that developers of third-party apps "owe them something". After all,
even before Tweetie the Twitter apps were generating profits for many small
companies before Twitter generated any significant revenue.

The problem with Twitter is that they provide an infrastructure service
without owning infrastructure but paying all the costs to provide it (aside
from bandwidth consumed by users).

If Twitter's going to go with this API tokens implementation I think they
should stop this love/hate relationship with third-party developers and tax
them per token. As long as it's a reasonable fee and not prohibitive, third-
party devs should be happy to pay. This 100,000 users cap is both arbitrary
and prohibitive for startups targeting growth.

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piffey
I think a lot of developers are looking at this in the wrong way. Twitter
realizes its potential as a service. It has been used to topple governments in
the last 5 years and to stage massive political movements. A lot has been
changed thanks to Twitter's method of communication. In the past year they've
hired multiple security experts and have begun making their product more
secure (look at the patches to the Twitter client). I think their move to
create licensed applications may not be as much for money as it is for
security and having trusted sources. Lets face it, most applications you can't
trust with your security. This allows Twitter to have a say in who meets their
standards.

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nihonjon
Steve Ballmer could offer some valuable advice to Dick on what's actually
important.[1]

On a more serious note, am I the only one who suspects they're not satisfied
with feed ads and want to drive more impressions on Twitter.com?

\--

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE>

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jdevonport
Looks like a direct answer to the Facebook PMD program, even the badge
qualifications are similar.

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nchlswu
Why isn't Twitter taking these data analyses and enterprise targetted services
and acquiring a service or two and developing them in house? It seems like
they already do a lot of liaising with companies, and this is a solid
extension.

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benologist
Letting Twitter audit your company and plans and then shortlist you if you're
doing something worth doing sounds like a great plan.

