

Twitter's response to the developer community - abraham
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/3f9023afef934d91

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megaduck
Basically this boils down to "don't build apps with similar functionality to
twitter.com". While that may sting some developers, at least it's a pretty
clear and unambiguous signal.

One nice thing is that they're spending time and effort to talk to their dev
community. Much better than the Apple approach, which is to make large
disruptive changes without warning or explanation.

~~~
dschobel
What percentage of lines of code written for the twitter platform have just
been clients? I'd be shocked if it wasn't the overwhelming majority.

It may be a simple principle but it is a change in position and it screws over
_a_lot_ of people.

~~~
jackowayed
So you pivot. Implement a feature that a niche will really like, but that the
official Twitter app won't implement because it complicates things for those
that don't care and fills a fairly small niche.

For example, I'd love to have a client that lets me filter extremely
powerfully. I should be able to filter by any field (for example, filter out
whose source is Ad.ly because it's all ads), use regular expressions, etc.

I think some apps come close, but I don't think any are quite as powerful as
I'd like. Even if one is, there are plenty more niches to fill. An iPhone
client that's not as pretty or feature-packed, but which loads instantly, for
example.

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dschobel
How can you reconcile:

 _"...when we dug in a little bit we realized that it was causing massive
confusion among user's who had an iPhone and were looking to use Twitter for
the first time. They would head to the App Store, search for Twitter and would
see results that included a lot of apps that had nothing to do with Twitter
and a few that did, but a new user wouldn't find what they were looking for
and give up. That is a lost user for all of us."_

with:

 _"We will also admit our mistakes when they are made and the Blackberry
client should never have been labeled "official". It has since been changed
and you won't see that language used with Twitter clients in the future."_

\------------------------

In the one case the lack of an official client was hurting new user
acquisition and in the other (Blackberry) case it was stepping on developer
toes?

~~~
rendezvouscp
I have a feeling that the word “official” connotes “authentic.” E.g., I would
trust the “official” version of a music video to not having any surprises,
while the unofficial versions are less trustworthy.

I think Twitter realizes that using the word “official” to describe their apps
makes it seem like other developers create unofficial apps, when in fact the
developers are using the same officially-sanctioned APIs.

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pauljonas
Sorry, latest move may chafe some developers, but in the current offerings of
Twitter clients, users suffer.

At least in my view, where none of the "third party" Twitter client choices
are acceptable (though, disclaimer, I've not experienced Tweetie, but a half
dozen others that inevitably send me back to Safari).

Contrast to Facebook where the iPhone app is extremely polished and eloquently
bundles just about all of the core functionality.

~~~
abraham
I've not used Facebook for the iPhone but last time I used it for android it
was basically for notifications and sent me to the mobile interface for all
meaningful interaction.

