

Dear Twitter. I Want To Share My Revenue With You. - jv2222
http://tweetminer.net/blog/?p=30

======
jacquesm
That makes good sense. It also helps cement a business relationship that would
be much more solid than the loose structure in place right now.

After all, who will you complain to if one day twitter decides that tweetminer
has to die. Better if you have a win/win and it costs them too if they shut
you down.

These 'third party products' on top of other peoples infrastructure are a
recent thing, and I have to admit I'm still getting used to it and not really
comfortable with it.

A project like that should be called a 'feature', it's not an independent
business by any definition, even if it does make money.

~~~
matthewcford
The twitter app I built <http://tweetarium.com> would benefit from something
like this. With regards to twitter pulling the plug on third parities, while
it is a worry this could happen, it's risk you factor when building on any
platform.

~~~
jacquesm
If at all possible try to differentiate and make your application work with
other ways of exchanging messages (such as IM).

That way you're not completely dependent on just the one platform. Ebuddy is a
nice sample of a company that did that right, they started out as single
platform and now support a whole bunch of them.

------
mattmaroon
Don't worry, you'll be able to. I imagine what's going to happen with Twitter
will be the same thing that will happen with Facebook, just faster. They might
even beat Facebook across the finish line. It's a pretty simple plan really:

1\. Build a product that gets lots of users. (check) 2\. Build a platform on
it that is easy and compelling to develop for so third parties can build apps.
(check) 3\. Let developers figure out how to make money off of those apps.
(currently in progress) 4\. Create a payment system to make accepting payments
from Twitter customers as easy as tweeting, take a cut of the revenue from
that.

~~~
sachinag
I think the iPhone and iTMS is the best example of this. If I'm not wrong (and
I could be), I thought Zynga was processing payment information on their own
servers.

~~~
avdempsey
Zynga has used several partners for payment processing, but yes, they're not
relying on Facebook for this service. Actually, Facebook is making a pile of
money off of the Mafia/Farm advertising Zynga does.

------
drawkbox
Considering the value of Twitter was really created by all the third-party
apps that use it, it is very possible that a model where third-party
developers bring in the revenue isn't so far off from what may happen.

------
chaosprophet
Perhaps building a micropayment service would get Twitter the much talked
about revenue??? An option to pay anybody on Twitter by mobile would be great.
Kind of like the App Store, you pay by Twitter and the sum + service charges
get added to your monthly phone bill.

------
rokhayakebe
How much of a business do you believe can be built around Twitter?

This is not to sound sarcastic or not. I made use of the Twitter API back in
2007 to deliver mobile content and RSS to SMS, but those were just features of
an application and not a business that relies on Twitter.

Do you really believe the Twitter ecosystem is viable for business in the long
term?

~~~
zackattack
Millions of dollars are built on the Facebook platform, I fail to see how this
is all that different.

~~~
rokhayakebe
I would like to know what percentage of Facebook apps can be considered a
business?

~~~
jfarmer
Considering thousands and thousands are made per day and most are not
necessarily, probably a very low percentage.

A more interesting question, IMO, is the "market size" of Facebook apps,
irrespective of your chance of success. I've built a few apps that generate
$800k-$1MM in revenue per year.

It's just much easier to get massive scale on Facebook than outside on the
web, and the monetization methods are constantly improving.

Of course, it's hard to say if you can just build a viable ten year business
out of it, or if the Platform will be dead in two years. But you take what you
can get now, factor in the risk of long-term failure, and branch out it ways
that protect you against that.

There's certainly enough money to sustain a decent business in a short-to-
medium-term.

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, I believe that without a seconds hesitation. But here is my problem with
this: A _REAL_ business, such as twitter or facebook creates an ecosystem
around it. You are just part of their ecosystem, conclusion, you are not a
business.

A business stands on its own strengths, and minimizes its dependence on
outside factors that threaten its existence.

If your business is solely dependent on Twitter or Facebook you should be
trying to diversify like mad.

~~~
caffeine
_A REAL business, such as twitter or facebook creates an ecosystem around it_

:s/REAL/big

It's called an ecosystem because of the web of interdependencies. If it makes
money, it's a business.

Biologists define an organism as a "thing that eats, poops and reproduces."
Let's just define a business as "a thing that eats resources and poops
profits".

In which case, businesses that are "just features" certainly count as
businesses. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora>

~~~
jacquesm
> a thing that eats resources and poops profits

By that definition large numbers of web 'businesses' are not businesses (yet)
because they do not make profits. Their owners might disagree though.

And there are plenty of 'real' businesses out there that make a loss.

It's really not that simple to put out a definition of what really is a
business, but I think that something that lives by the grace of an API as a
total dependent on some other company does not count as a business in its own
right.

Every now and then you come across a rant somewhere from someone that got 'cut
off by google' because they depend for 100% of their sales on search engine
traffic, and google happened to provide the bigger portion of that.

Suddenly they find out that even though they were profitable last month they
did not have an actual business, they forgot to realize they were actually a
small extension of the google ecosystem and were only able to make a profit
because of that. Anybody that has been in business for a while would realize
that is an accident waiting to happen.

Making your company 100% dependent on FB or Twitter is no different.

It's easy money if and when it works, but easy come, easy go.

~~~
dirkstoop
Following your logic, if you're in the business of selling pencil sharpeners,
relying on the existence of one or more third parties selling pencils, who in
turn rely on a market of people who want to use pencils, is also not a 'real'
business, because who knows, the third parties may decide to start selling a
self-sharpening pencil and stop offering the regular ones, effectively cutting
you off.

Now, the above mentions _one or more_ third parties. Having redundant
providers significantly reduces the risk of being cut off like that, but while
having a known single point of failure may seem stupid, it's not as if only
businesses that don't have any are real.

Whether or not something constitutes a 'real' business does not hinge on that
business' dependencies or any other risk factors. Whether you'd want to be a
stakeholder in it is an entirely different matter.

How many of us in the software world would actually have _a real business_
within this definition of dependencies if you consider how quickly we'd all go
in the red if google somehow ends up blacklisting us? With a somewhat grown-up
business, you don't need 100% of your sales to evaporate to be in serious
trouble..

~~~
jacquesm
> Now, the above mentions one or more third parties.

Exactly.

> Whether or not something constitutes a 'real' business does not hinge on
> that business' dependencies or any other risk factors.

If a business is created with the explicit goal of being in the position of
building right on top of another business for which there is no alternative,
then I doubt the right of that business to call itself an independent
business.

Sure, no business is without risk, there are always factors that increase or
decrease the risk. You should always be trying to minimize those risks, and if
there is one thing that is a huge red flag for investors or buyers then it
would be a dependency like that.

The 'What if you get cut off' question is absolutely unanswerable. If you
manage to get it to the point of a contract with termination clauses and such
then that's a different story, but until then, to just build your enterprise
on top of an API and hope for the best is not a good long term strategy.

Your point about google is well taken, I'm happy to report that my business
depends for less than 2% of it's traffic and income on google, I wouldn't have
it any other way.

Of course there are numerous examples of companies that did great building for
instance software on top of the microsoft platform, but worst case there would
have been other operating systems that they could have ported their software
to in case microsoft would go under.

If a company like twitter or facebook would go under or decide they no longer
want you or that you become too much of a threat you're done.

Instantly.

And you don't even have any recourse, simply because you never had a
contractual right to be there in the first place, after all you use an API at
the providers discretion, and nowhere in their terms of service does it say
that you have a right to access, no matter how popular or profitable you are.

That's not the same as being in a business relationship, even about something
as mundane as buying and selling pencils.

The self sharpening pencil, by the way, has been done:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_pencil>

And, more in jest:

[http://www.pencilthings.com/product.php?productid=100664?utm...](http://www.pencilthings.com/product.php?productid=100664?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=ppc)

But they didn't put any pencil sharpener producers out of business, though I
suspect the typewriter and the word processor may have caused a few of them to
find different sources of income.

