

Twitter Removes “via {client}” Attribution in #newTwitter. Buh-Bye Developers - cristinacordova
http://www.cristinajcordova.com/2010/09/twitter-removes-via-client-attribution-in-newtwitter/

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seldo
This is misleading. She says app attribution is "completely removed and hidden
in the details section". If it's in the details section, it's hardly
completely hidden, is it?

It's quite prominently displayed in the details pane:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021847660/>

And even more so on the tweet's individual page:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/seldo/5021848326/>

It's absolutely still there. It just moved a little bit. Non-story.

~~~
cristinacordova
I meant completely removed from the main stream and hidden in the details
section. Sorry for the confusion. It still removes attribution from how most
users view tweets - from within the stream. How many users are likely to view
the details for each tweet? Why is the attribution given less face time to the
user? I would also disagree with the small type in the details section being
"prominent"

~~~
pierrefar
_still removes attribution from how most users view tweets_

I thought most users view tweets not through the twitter stream on the web but
using clients. The clients may or may not show the posting app's attribution,
so I don't see this as a major shift of the status quo.

Also the mobile web version doesn't have this attribution either:
<http://mobile.twitter.com/>

~~~
dho
According to <http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html> most
people use Twitter's web client.

~~~
pierrefar
That's a very misleading graph. It's not about how many people read tweets
through the different channels.

There are many reasons to log into twitter.com, and so the graph needs to
break out (or at least explicitely state) how many people _read_ tweets on
twitter.com.

Another, more important, point: there is probably a long tail effect here. I
have a hunch that when you aggregate all reading via API vs reading via the
web, the breakdown would show a huge API to web ratio.

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naz
Less is more. Twitter is the embodiment of this ideology. 99% of normal people
don't care about Twitter clients.

~~~
jonknee
Aren't more people using a Twitter client than the website? Seems like that
would mean a whole lot more than 1% of people care.

~~~
smallblacksun
They don't care what client a person is using to send their tweets.

~~~
dillydally
OTOH, how are client developers supposed to get the word out? This will just
encourage more aggressive tactics, like requiring people to tweet about the
app to unlock certain features.

~~~
nitrogen
Actually, that sounds like a very interesting idea. Is this already used in
practice, and does it end up being a problem? If it's already being done, are
the features that are unlocked worth the forced spam?

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ugh
I don’t think that the attribution is of interest to most users. It doesn’t
strike me as something that is as important as name and time, the other two
pieces of information displayed in the stream. Showing it among other less
important information – namely on the details pane or individual page – seems
sensible to me.

I can understand how developers might not be happy about it but I think
Twitter would be ill-advised to eschew sensible changes for the users because
of what amounts to politics.

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jasonmar
HN is always talking about metrics, scalability, and engineering, here's my
take on this from that perspective:

Imagine a twitter engineer working on the redesign was looking at data from
the homepage, looking for something to remove.

It turns out that the least clicked on thing on the entire page is the client
attribution.

He looks at eye-tracking data too, and it turns out the only people who look
at the client names, are developers!

The engineer opens his iPhone's calculator, and finds that by removing
attribution he is reducing dynamic stream content by 33% (tweet, time,
attribution) for 100M+ users.

What kind of engineer is not going to jump on this? Especially for a piece
nobody except developers is going to complain about losing?

A cleaner, faster homepage is better for users. Sorry developers, the world
does not revolve around you.

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jrockway
I hate the attribution. I also like the old twitter web interface.

When I'm not using the web interface, I use it through an irc proxy. No
pictures, no attribution... nothing but content.

(On my phone, I use Twidroid, but it's so buggy that all tweets attributed to
Twidroid from me are usually, "it botched my priceless photo again". Not
exactly the advertising they want, I bet...)

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ja2ke
It's not just the attributions leaving the main feed. Just a few months ago
Twitter was going out of their way to promoting 3rd party clients (in the form
of free advertising in the web client, in the space now occupied by Who To
Follow). The last few months have seen almost all promotion for 3rd party
clients disappear.

Going from attributing every tweet in the main feed and promoting outside
clients freely on the sidebar of everyone's account to shunting attributions
into a secondary info pane, that's a very large shift.

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catshirt
even though (like many pointed out) it's only moved- not removed... what's
important here is the sentiment, which is the same.

if this was in fact removed intentionally, i can't help but think that this
was a conscious decision to make twitter a much more central (at the peril of
third parties) experience (much like the overall bigger picture of
#newtwitter).

that all said... they did add gist support which is so awesome. i can't take
sides on this one.

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SilianRail
Ok it's actually just moved a little bit, but more importantly...

Why really should Twitter care? Do they have any obligation to developers? No.
Correct me if I'm wrong but legally what's stopping Twitter from shutting off
its API and creating its own client?

~~~
cristinacordova
Twitter is already its own client. Twitter for iPad, iPhone and web are all
produced by Twitter - in competition with Tweetdeck, Brizzly etc.

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lovskogen
A second strike to Twitterific, whose name wasn't mentioned in the #newtitter
newsletter, instead some clients less known were listed.

Twitterific is Twitter for iPhone and iPads biggest competitor, so I see why,
but it still is kinda evil.

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credo
Knowing Twitter, I'm going to say that this is a bug.

I'm assuming that removing the "via client" attribution was not intentional

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lindvall
For the people who are unhappy about the lack of "attribution", it seems
almost as silly as complaining you can't see what web browser was used to
submit a tweet via the website.

While it may have been interesting to see, I think there is a perfectly
reasonable argument to be made for simplifying an interface and removing as
much noise as is possible (especially as they've added so much
information/noise to the new interface).

