
Twitter Removes 'Via' Stamp From Web Client - twapi
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/08/28/twitter-longer-displays-client-tweet-posted-web-emphasizing-first-party-reading-experience/
======
uptown
Twitter's image would be better served by the bandaid-removal approach.
Everything bad - all at once, rather than this drip-drip-drip of changes
perceived to be hostile towards its developer community. You have to figure
they've got a road-map of where this heads, so why not do it all at once and
consolidate the pain?

~~~
wamatt
Actually I agree with you in this case, given the massive amount of attention
on Twitter now, but in situations of lesser scrutiny, the 'drip-drip-drip' is
often the the more cunning move.

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normalcy> and all the related
concepts, eg boiling the frog etc.

~~~
DannyBee
Except you know, if you boil a frog slowly, it will still jump out.

[http://www.fastcompany.com/26455/next-time-what-say-we-
boil-...](http://www.fastcompany.com/26455/next-time-what-say-we-boil-
consultant)

IE needs more actual examples, instead of metaphors that turn out to be
completely wrong in practice.

------
tzaman
It was about time, always wondered how 'via' improved user experience in any
way.

EDIT: since I'm getting downvoted because some of you don't agree:

There's like 140M active Twitter users (as of March 2012) and like, 30 clients
(guesstimating). If I assume there's like 1M developers on Twitter (which I
don't think it is), this feature is still useful to less than 1% of their user
base. Not exactly a "must have" feature IMHO.

~~~
mikeash
It helped people discover new Twitter clients by seeing what other people were
posting with. I'll admit that this benefit may not have been anywhere near
worth the added clutter and screen space, but it was good for something.

~~~
twapi
and it helped me to remove useless/automated tweets from timeline using a
home-made greasemonkey/user script.

~~~
shock3naw
That's your own fault for following spammy accounts.

~~~
twapi
My friends use _automated_ apps like Instagram, Foursquare, GetGlue ...... and
many more. They are not spammy.

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fsniper
I'm sick of this kind of twitter stories. This is just a hype about Twitters'
internal affairs. Their business. Why on earth this is top news or even on
frontpage? They have just skipped showing 2 words. If the story was about "how
twitter hypothetically screwed and made 2 man hours work of deleting two words
from tweets 2 man days of work" I'd be more willing to read it.

Please - this is not about hacking, this is not about technology, this is not
even about entrepreneurship - I would really love stories about twitter's
opensource projects, twitter's technology choice, twitter's software
development methodologies, twitter's devels' thoughts about samsung-apple
case. But this is not news worthy. At least not news worthy for Hacker News.

~~~
danilocampos
Tell ya what I'm sick of.

This kind of comment.

Why on earth should I care what some anonymous person thinks is newsworthy?
You've got a counter right there showing you exactly how many people find it
worth reading.

If it's interesting, read it and/or comment. If it's not, scroll past. Flag if
you want. But the only thing less newsworthy than a given story is your
assessment of its newsworthiness.

~~~
fsniper
Look, there is something wrong about this.

This story has 97 point at time of my writing, 44 comments. It's top story.
Learning C with gdb story has 297 points, 80 comments and it's on third row.

~~~
darrenkopp
It's not based solely on points, it's based on points and time.

~~~
fsniper
Thank you. I know how could it be calculated. Well I did not look into the
code but I deducted it. But I was just trying to make a point in the context.

~~~
ed209
Actually, I'm a HN regular and I find this story interesting. I find it
interesting because it's an indication about how Twitter intends to treat
developers - a signal that I should worry about about building off other APIs
and not the Twitter API.

~~~
EnderMB
> _"a signal that I should worry about about building off other APIs and not
> the Twitter API."_

Call me crazy, but hasn't this always been the case? Relying on an API out of
your control is fine if you're running a website, but if you have a business
and you rely on the Twitter's and the Facebook's of the world to keep you
going then it's only a matter of time.

~~~
ed209
In the beginning this was not the signal being sent out to developers, so I
will call you crazy :)

I understand the risks. Hell, I'm even taking them with my own project, but I
always hoped if you add value to the API owner and that they created the API
to give more value to their users why would they company cut you off?

As in all business there are risks. No company have every parameter under
control. Building a business off other companies API is one of those risk
variables I'm willing to take.

However, Twitter is quite clearly telling us that it's not a risk worth taking
anymore.

------
porterhaney
I really liked the via tag for one purpose.

Buffer.

I liked to know when folks were live tweeting versus time delayed tweeting as
it gave me context. If they were live, I'd respond. If they weren't I'd just
consumer the content (if interested) and move on.

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rhizome
"First-party clients" is certainly a new euphemism in this context.

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dj2stein9
This is very clearly the end of Twitter as a "platform". Now that Twitter is
huge, they don't want or need developers or 3rd party clients. They want to
centralize everything into a monetizable service. That would've been fine if
that was their plan from the get-go. The bait-n-switch they're doing
disingenuous at the least.

So what now? Status.net hasn't gained traction, and it's obviously too early
to say anything about tent.io, but I am very, very hopeful that eventually a
new open, decentralized platform/protocol will emerge as the next-generation
social communications platform to replace both Twitter and Facebook
simultaneously.

~~~
kylek
dramatic much? it's not like 3rd party clients stopped working

~~~
dj2stein9
You'd have to be silly to not expect what Twitters next move will be.

------
nicholassmith
"We've always been at war with third-party clients."

Twitter needs to shit or get off the pot. Either they want a nice big
ecosystem and they make money by leveraging their ridiculous amount of 3rd-
party traffic, or they listen to the biz dev guys with their nice haircuts and
just force all traffic through their official points. It's so wishy-washy,
with the Tweetbot Alpha token pull, and this it's very clear they're saying
this is the new way but through so many layers of subtext it's like reading a
management presentation on blue-sky thinking.

------
brianstorms
This is an unfortunate move. I found it very useful to see who was tweeting
using an app that suggested it's the real person, versus tweets coming from
large, paid enterprise apps using Twitter's API -- big "social media
management" software that a marketing organization would use to schedule
tweets at pre-designated times.

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c16
The API changes stated that they wanted all clients to look the same and to
have a similar experience. Could this be a hint that they want to rule out 3rd
party clients slowly but surely?

~~~
RexRollman
I think they are more concerned about users avoiding ads than they are about a
consistent user interface.

------
knodi
Not too long now before twitter releases pricing?

~~~
ruswick
Pricing for what? Users? That would be an unequivocal death knell. Developers?
Possibly. However, it's doubtful that Twitter stands to gain any significant
revenue from charging for an API. Their audience for advertising is so much
larger and more lucrative, a paid API would be of trivial importance to their
bottom line and a waste of time.

I don't think they'll charge for anything. Doing so would relegate them to the
same, minuscule potential user base as App.net has.

------
twodayslate
This should not be surprising to any of you.

------
zhuzhuor
one more step closer to monopoly

