

Ask PG: Have your feelings changed about RFS3? - icey

Given some of the recent policy changes at Twitter, do you still feel comfortable with the suggestion to build companies on top of it?
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pg
Yes, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw the news. I would be
pretty cautious about building anything on Twitter after that.

~~~
mickdarling
PG, sorry, but I am a little confused by your answer.

Is your "yes" in response to "do you still feel comfortable with the
suggestion to build companies on top of it?" Or, to the fact that you would
now recommend other companies and startups be "cautious about building
anything on Twitter after" the new Twitter TOS and other policy changes there?

Are you removing <http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html> from the Y-C suggestions?

My team and I were hacking on our site to launch <http://tweeplayer.com> at
SXSW exactly at the moment the new TOS came out, and it freaked us out at the
time. But, the gist I got from people in the know was that as long as you are
helping Twitter get content they wouldn't get on their own, they will likely
be happy with you.

~~~
pg
I meant yes, my feelings have changed about RFS3. I would no longer be so
enthusiastic about funding companies built on Twitter.

------
icey
Clickable RFS3 link: <http://ycombinator.com/rfs3.html>

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bobz
On the other hand, it might be a good time to launch/fund a product that
competes. Without its developer ecosystem, Twitter is practically an unusable
product. Sure, they have their network, but so did Myspace, Digg.

Twitter can't reasonably act like Apple and get away with it. It's a very low
cost-to-switch environment. If this trend continues, if they make things too
hard for devs, the devs will leave, and won't be in a hurry to come back.
Might be a perfect time for a lean, developer friendly startup with the right
innovation to come in and claim a piece of that market.

~~~
jkarp
I don't agree that Twitter is a very low cost-to-switch environment. Its value
only comes with scale - I think it would be difficult for non HN users of
Twitter to see enough value to make a switch, at least, not without something
new or quite compelling...

~~~
bobz
I suppose what I meant is that, unlike Apple, there's no cost for a user to
start using a competitor. But I suppose switch isn't even really the right
word here; there's no reason they even have to stop using Twitter.

Basically, if something else did gain momentum, it could happen pretty fast.
As opposed to an iPhone competitor, which Apple can see coming and make
strategic moves to plug leaks.

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plamb
The fact that they're changing policies without much community discussion is
certainly scary to any twitter-based company. Luckily, it appears that they're
primarily opposed to clients, which is only one of the many possible
applications people can build on top of Twitter.

~~~
jmathai
I think the general concern is that today it's clients. Tomorrow it will be
something else..

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kposehn
Actually, I feel more comfortable now with Twitter after this.

Why? They have come out and said it. We know their direction now and what they
intend: don't make another client, but make a /unique way of using twitter
itself/

If anything, this is exactly what we need as entrepreneurs. We now have a
mandate from the source to take their platform and ecosystem to the next
level. If everyone else wants to quake in their boots over this silliness,
then I say go for it.

~~~
runevault
My concern would tend more along the lines of "how long before they change the
deal again?"

They have the right to do so, but it makes building on top of their platform
unappealing, and really downright dangerous. It's the same reason building on
top of iOS is tricky since you can be denied a way to make money off of your
work at any moment by a whim from apple.

~~~
jdsboston
Yeah, it may seem an odd comparison but the tone and thoughts expressed here
resemble community complaints back in 2004 that serious "uber power sellers"
made after eBay started really messing around with its pricing and policies
too much and too often. Within a couple years, sellers realized they had to
diversify away from eBay and AMZN effectively captured a lot of that value by
creating the third party platform.

eBay then, now Twitter and any platform with some critical mass still has to
be careful about policy changes like this; they can easily create enough
animosity to alienate their most innovative users, motivating them to support
other platforms and eventually flee entirely. This pattern has played out a
number of times elsewhere; Twitter isn't invincible.

If a platform isn't really an open commty standard and shows it doesn't
appreciate your contributions why build on them? And why not instead figure
out how to organize other disgruntled users to build something better that
addresses their most apparent shortcomings?

