
Twitter CEO Dorsey Apologizes to Developers - jsnathan
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/twitter-ceo-dorsey-apologizes-to-developers-says-he-wants-to-reset-relations/
======
TeMPOraL
Oh, so another cycle starts. Here's a note I took back earlier, around the
time of the original Twitter fiasco, pasted straight from my quotes file:

    
    
      * Sovereign from Mass Effect on using someone else's technology
        
        "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays,
        our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths
        we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You
        exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."
    
        Strangely, it seems to describe recent (2012/2013) situation with
        API of Twitter perfectly.

~~~
blantonl
And this is exactly how it should be. If you want to build your business on
the back of someone else who is doing the heavy lifting, then don't be
surprised when they rear up and no longer let you ride.

I still don't understand why people feel they are _entitled_ to perpetual API
access.

Maybe Twitter should follow the lead that I do - those that license and use
many of my APIs pay on a royalty model - they pay a certain percentage of all
revenue that their platform generates. Period.

~~~
nstart
It's not about entitlement. It's about asking people not to be lazy. Twitter
grew into what it is today BECAUSE of 3rd party developers. Their core revenue
which is ads has its roots embedded in what other people invented like the
hashtag, and the retweets. Their user engagement and growth was given birth to
BY these same developers who created great experiences when Twitter didn't
have the resources to do so.

And after that, Twitter felt like it's platform had been evolved by other
people long enough and said "alright everyone, we don't want you anymore" and
killed businesses overnight.

> And this is exactly how it should be. If you want to build your business on
> the back of someone else who is doing the heavy lifting,

In this case, it was a group of people who built twitter's business (and then
their business) on top of the Twitter backbone. Put another way, Twitter
wouldn't be what it is without the developers.

The side effect of all of this is that Twitter's innovation has since
languished. They've settled into incremental changes such as the way you view
hashtags of an event now. I get that that's not a trivial thing either, but
their business model should have always been about increasing capabilities of
Twitter's core based on what other developers made interesting (the retweet is
an example of something like this done really well).

My first statement. It's about asking people to be not lazy. Twitter stepped
in and thought "hmm we can't control our ad experience in a world like this so
let's shut down the people who've built our business all these days"

That's lazy. That's the result of a bingo meeting that couldn't come to a
conclusion on any alternative suggestion and instead opted to use a nuke.

If they really cared, they could have asked developers at the time. They had a
great relationship then and they could have avoided this entire thing of
asking developers for feedback now. They could have done that back then, and
I'm sure people would have come up with great suggestions and compromises.

~~~
iofj
This is the fundamental change that you accept with using SAAS software - like
twitter or so many other things nowadays. Whereas if you're running your
company on something like office, you're guaranteed access to what you have in
perpetuity. With SAAS software, the software can change, can be discontinued,
can disappear without warning, can start spying on you, can ...

And the argument here is that once someone has a decent part of the market,
they can't start eating the people that built the market for them ? Good luck
with that one. Hell, it's Amazon's entire business plan (first, get everyone
to use your platform by having ridiculously low margins, push every other
distributor out of business, then, jack up prices), and I very much doubt
Amazon is the only one doing so.

Maybe we should be arguing that Twitter's previous management simply weren't
smart enough, and didn't find a proper way to monetize twitter yet. I do hope
that is the case.

------
michaelbuckbee
The API Terms of Use haven't changed:

[https://dev.twitter.com/overview/terms](https://dev.twitter.com/overview/terms)

The most egregious of which continues to be: "Apps replicating Twitter’s core
user experience (what we’ve called “traditional Twitter clients”) are
discouraged and have a ceiling of 100,000 users, among other restrictions. Be
sure to read the applicable TOS clauses carefully if you’re considering
building such an app."

This is really bad as "core user experience" is something open to a very wide
degree of interpretation.

~~~
flurp
I actually think they've been very clear on this from the beginning, including
the reason why (although it wasn't spelled out).

They've always meant apps that offer more or less the same functionality as
official Twitter clients.

For the people who actually read the terms instead of picking up their
pitchforks back when Twitter had that big tos "change of heart" would have
understood that They definitely could have handled it better and been clear
that the user limit was really meant for Twitter-clones.

It's clear they want to control the way most people use Twitter, but also to
show advertising. As best I can recall, the tos change came around the same
time as they started putting in ads. Besides the few remaining twitter clones
always play catchup when Twitter puts out new features (recent example;
polls).

~~~
ksk
>They've always meant apps that offer more or less the same functionality as
official Twitter clients.

That would mean that if I wrote a Twitter clone that consumed 100x less memory
and was much more performant, it would still be a "banned" application even
when there is clear benefit for the users.

>been clear that the user limit was really meant for Twitter-clones.

Even if that was true, its backstabbing developers who are popularizing
Twitter in their own way.

>Besides the few remaining twitter clones always play catchup when Twitter
puts out new features (recent example; polls).

And why is that a problem? What if an app developer thinks that new features
are not worth them spending development time/money on?

It would be like Apple forcing ios developers to support force touch if they
want to continue selling their apps.

~~~
flurp
> 100x less memory and was much more performant

Technically you're not prevented from doing so - you would just have to keep
it to yourself (/family/friends/etc). Non-technical people rarely care about
these things.

> backstabbing developers

I don't disagree. Would be interesting if there are any stats on who/what made
Twitter popular, got any?

> And why is that a problem?

It's a problem for Twitter when you're trying to run a top-brand. Clients who
don't keep up-to-date actually make Twitter look bad to the public. It also
makes it harder for Twitter to innovate, move quickly (and probably get usage
stats), without coordinating with external developers. Apple actually does (in
some aspects) force developers to keep their apps up to date. I develop iOS
apps and this actually consumes way more time than I wish it did.

Your concerns are valid from a third-party concern but from Twitter's first-
party concern they are distractions.

~~~
ksk
>It's a problem for Twitter when you're trying to run a top-brand. Clients who
don't keep up-to-date actually make Twitter look bad to the public. It also
makes it harder for Twitter to innovate, move quickly (and probably get usage
stats), without coordinating with external developers

Yes ! But shouldn't we let the users decide that? If one of the clients
implements the newer features and users like them, they would switch to the
other client. That is assuming Twitter believes in competition. This makes it
seem like they want to eliminate competition and consolidate control. Its
rather anti-capitalistic.

>Your concerns are valid from a third-party concern but from Twitter's first-
party concern they are distractions.

Yes, I'm siding with with the third parties. Twitter is a giant company with a
megaphone to make their argument anywhere they want. Personally, I don't think
anyone should care about Twitter's bottom line except Twitter themselves.

------
crabasa
The single most important thing that Twitter can do to encourage developers to
build on their platform is to completely and unambiguously align interests. If
a developer is successful, Twitter should be successful, and vice versa. This
is infinitely more reliable than any promise and is how all successful
application platforms operate.

~~~
mrweasel
>If a developer is successful, Twitter should be successful, and vice versa.

They would still need to find a way to make money, which was exactly why
Twitter started to limit the 3rd. party developers to begin with. They hoped
that tighter control over their eco-system would help selling more ads.

What would developers build on top of Twitter that can make Twitter money? I
don't question that you can build interesting and wonderful apps, using
Twitter as infrastructure or as a data source, but that just burdens Twitter
further. Either developers need to pay Twitter for access to their platform,
or developers need to allow Twitter to push ads. Alternatively developers and
Twitter can data-mine the crap out of their users and split the profit.

I just don't see what product Twitter could push that will cover their
operational cost. Twitter is a publicly listed business, success is measured
solely on profit.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Twitter has insight into what everyone on the planet is thinking RIGHT NOW,
and they're using it to sell ads for t-shirts.

That's just a fundamental lack of imagination.

There's all kinds of things that can be built on that, if you can rely on the
platform to remain available to you.

~~~
rdtsc
I've been hearing this -- "Twitter is just not inventive enough, they know
what everyone is doing in the world" and so on.

Yet billions of dollars later and nobody there realised it? I can't imagine
people there are so stupid and that they'd come read HN, smack they hand on
their heads and say "Oh, we never knew, thanks HN commenters for saving us.
We'll make a great profit and share it with you!".

But not to miss out, and join HN armchair analysts group, I for one, don't
believe Twitter is that useful or valuable. Does it know what my neighbors are
thinking? My boss? My grandma? Me? No, because I am not on Twitter, they are
not.

I see a lot of garbage on Twitter usually. Silly status lines "mmm, yummy
green salad!" or "what is the meaning of life..". Developers would do
something like "Compiling takes too long, we need a new compiler!". And so on.
Then of course it is the quintessential platform for spats and
misunderstandings. It is hard to express ideas in 140 character lines so
everything feels short, mean and snippy and people get into lengthy back and
forths that are mostly stupid and pointless.

Is it impossible to monitise what they do? No, but I think it is not as clear-
cut as it may seem.

~~~
tracker1
I think it depends on who you are following... I don't check or even try to
keep up with twitter.. I tend to check recents a few times a week.. but every
time I see at least something interesting... most of my follows are in tech
though.. yeah, there's a lot of random stuff... but there's some gems in there
too.

I'm actually more inclined to tweet when I find something interesting...
partly because looking at my own history works better than browser bookmarks
at this point.. and partly because someone else might also find it
interesting.

------
pp19dd
So I have a feeling that starting next month they're basically gimping their
API on purpose to drive developers toward GNIP, which they bought last year
for $134 million. Developers who can afford it anyway, because GNIP is not
cheap.

There is a popular twitter API endpoint which is undocumented and unsupported,
yet insanely popular due to its functionality. It's the tweet-count-for-URL
one; ex:
[https://cdn.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://www...](https://cdn.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://www.voanews.com/content/philippines-
woes-arms-manufacturers/2953923.html)

Twitter is now cancelling that endpoint (on 11/20) and recommending for
thousands of developers to switch to their streams API for the functionality,
which requires a program to maintain a constant socket connection and listen
for filtered URLs to show up. Which, sure, that's a reasonable architecture
for some cases.

However, what used to be a simple API-query-for-a-known-URL is now going to be
a daemon program running 24/7 for months and months that listens to all of
twitter for all conversations about the base domain, and then tries to emulate
a count.

~~~
marktangotango
If you find this useful, certainly others have, identify a need, fill it,
profit....

~~~
jc4p
And run into issues when your API key gets ratelimited :)

------
gavanwoolery
Twitter has huge, huge potential. To me it is 100x more useful than something
like LinkedIn - even though this is not its purpose. I connect and interact
with people in my industry (in an unobtrusive way). My reputation is my
followers list. Twitter is already being used for this purpose (some actors
and models value are now determined by the size of their follower base). And
that is just one facet of its potential value.

But...they really need to focus more both on the needs of their users, and
even more so, developers. A simple example - I wanted to upload videos
natively to Twitter (to surpass the limits that GIFs impose)+++. Its doable
through an iPhone, but I no longer own one (+ you need to transfer the file to
your iPhone, which is a bit of a hassle). I had to write my own script to
accomplish this, and the API was anything but helpful in this process (I had
to randomly tweak video settings until it would accept one of my videos).

+++ (Note that this is different from simply linking a Youtube video - twitter
videos are auto-expanded and auto-play, which makes a huge difference for
interactions in my experience). GIF limit is 5 MB IIRC, and video limit is 15
MB (and 15 MB / 30 seconds of video lets you show so much more than a 5 MB
GIF). Script is here if anyone needs it (designed to run on a Mac, requires
TWURL and Ruby): [http://pastebin.com/45h1mx8s](http://pastebin.com/45h1mx8s)

~~~
mrweasel
So how much would you pay for access to Twitter?

There's a ton of people who seem to know what Twitter needs to do, except it's
never things that translate to profit. Take your own example with videos. It
would be nice feature, but it's just costing Twitter even more money.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I have some pretty good ideas how to profit from Twitter, the problem is that
I can't trust them to let me do it. Who knows when they'll cut me off
entirely? So I don't bother.

~~~
coldtea
No, what parent asked is how will Twitter profit...

~~~
waterlesscloud
If I could rely on Twitter, I'd pay them. That's how they profit. Not a hard
question, really.

~~~
s73v3r
I don't think the amount of people who would pay Twitter is that high.

~~~
riffic
Pay twitter for _what_? To read messages? Or to get their message out?

Start charging the folks (businesses, media et cetera) that have a million+
followers, these entities can surely pay to get their microblog posts
published.

~~~
coldtea
I don't think they could collect anything more than pocket money by merely
charging > 1M accounts.

------
swang
Translation: "We're too in the box to think outside of the box. So other
developers please find a way to make Twitter popular again so we can steal
that application[0], bar any other third-party from making anything related to
that idea so we can be the sole monetizer of said application.

[0] Application not being an "app", but more of a new way to use twitter.

~~~
jalfresi
Absolutely! If any dev falls for this trap again then they need their head
examined. Fool me once...

------
jaytaylor
From TFA:

    
    
        Can developers trust Twitter this time?
    

No.

Don't get me wrong, back while working at Klout we got to meet Jack Dorsey and
he is intelligent and interesting. Personally I like him and have some respect
for him.

With that said, CEO's don't stay forever so there are no guarantees about how
long the reign of Jack will last. Since he won't always be in a position to
make good on this promise, how can we trust? What is it actually worth?

Where is the olive branch? Words sound nice but I've learned to pay more
attention to actions.

How about something like free firehose access or at least making it affordable
for mere mortals? Just "turning the api back on" won't be enough to convince
me to sink anymore dev time into $twtr.

~~~
15155
> How about something like free firehose access

"Nope, million bucks, besides, you couldn't possibly handle XX megabits of
streaming data per second!!"

Every conversation I've had with anyone at Twitter.

~~~
mrweasel
That's not exactly unreasonable is it? There are companies that will pay for
fire hose access, so it's clearly worth something.

It's also their only real product.

------
jedberg
I think the picture in the article sums it up perfectly. It would be really
hard to ever trust them again unless they were willing to put a contract in
place with some sort of financial penalty to them. And even then I'm not sure
I would trust them.

~~~
calcsam
Here it is:

[https://twitter.com/jf/status/524412388745818113?ref_src=tws...](https://twitter.com/jf/status/524412388745818113?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

~~~
kzhahou
"Ok, great job team, let's launch our new Twitter-based product today.
Three...two...one...LAUNCH!

 _< Access denied - TOS violation>_

AAAAARGH! Good grief!"

------
admax88q
Nothing like an "apology" that doesn't apologize for the real wrongdoing. How
I love corporate speak.

"Our relationship with developers got confusing, unpredictable. We want to
come to you today and apologize for the confusion."

Yeah it was the "confusion" that was wrong. Nothing like apologizing but not
admitting fault either. He's basically saying "we did the right thing, we just
didn't communicate it clearly."

~~~
bloaf
"From now on, when we hose developers, we will do so in an unambiguous and
predictable manner."

~~~
Alupis
Why does it seem it's only Twitter with this problem? (or at least the most
frequent and public).

Twitter "hoses" developers all the time who were making money based on apps
supporting Twitter. They "hose" the developer because Twitter would rather
make that money instead of allowing others to, yet they then fail to
capitalize on the vacuum they just created.

Over time, it's made Twitter a seemingly very unattractive platform to try to
dev against. Twitter doesn't make much in terms of earnings on their own, it
seems it would be in their best interest to allow an ecosystem around their
platform.

~~~
stanleydrew
Facebook has also done this repeatedly, but most of their issues aren't
arbitrary business decisions. They just make breaking changes to production
APIs all the time.

~~~
Alupis
> Facebook has also done this repeatedly ... They just make breaking changes
> to production APIs all the time.

They do, but that doesn't slam the door shut on a developer/business purely
for the sake of slamming the door shut on a developer/business.

From what I've seen, Facebook encourages API usage. Twitter encourages it
until you make money, then they shut you down - often stating they're building
a similar app/service and you'd be competing with them -- only then to never
launch said app/service.

Twitter as a platform isn't worth much (as evidenced by year after year of not
turning profits). The value in Twitter is the data - but they are locking it
away.

Why not go the Google route and charge for API usage over a certain threshold.
Twitter could stop caring what users do with the data, and make money as their
ecosystem grows and becomes more successful.

~~~
cpeterso
It seems like the point of a API is to let third-party developers assume the
risk of experimenting with new services. Then Twitter can acquire or copy the
successful services.

~~~
Alupis
> Then Twitter can acquire or copy the successful services.

I think this is what makes people so hostile towards Twitter.

Twitter neither clones successful services nor continues to run those they
acquire. Instead they either shut them down, or acquire then shut them down -
meanwhile completely missing opportunity after opportunity to capitalize on
their massive ocean of data.

It seems, based on history, Twitter is not interested in running many services
around the Twitter platform/API/data. Instead they really just want to be
"Twitter".

I say, let them do what they do best - acquire data and build great API's. Let
3rd parties build Twitter's userbase and data, but charge them for access to
the API. It's a simple monetization plan.

------
volaski
The type of "Developers" they're trying to reach is NOT people who want to
build Twitter apps. That era is over and it ain't coming back. Rather, they're
trying to reach the people who make mobile apps who need good analytics tools,
crash reporting tools, etc. It's not even related to Twitter.

Which is exactly why I am cautious about this. When Google gives away Google
analytics for free, we trust that Google will rarely come after our small
startup since they already have a very lucrative business model. We know that
Google knows the risk of betraying their users is not worth the trouble
(unless the opportunity is huge enough that they would actually want to take
the risk, in which case it wouldn't matter anyway).

In case of Twitter we don't have that trust. Even looking at Fabric, I really
think--as of today--it's really THE best analytics/crash report tool out there
for app developers, but I also tend to think it's a trojan horse. It's obvious
they are trying to penetrate developer mindshare AND their apps through
Fabric. When you use Digits, you're basically outsourcing your user database
to Twitter. When you use crashlytics for your social app, you're giving away
all your user behavior to Twitter. I just hope Fabric came from Google instead
of Twitter, for the same reason I don't use Parse from Facebook.

------
Karunamon
Apology not accepted. Twitter tipped their hand here a long time ago - once
the network got strong enough, start locking things down so those crazy devs
don't do anything cool or interesting that you can't monetize, nevermind if it
makes the user experience many times better.

~~~
raverbashing
And of course it goes both ways, like Instagram preventing the pictures from
showing on the twitter timeline

(Not saying twitter didn't deserve this)

------
dansingerman
I think that horse may have bolted Jack. I am not sure a developer who had the
rug pulled from under them once will take the risk of investing their time in
the Twitter API again. Fool me once etc...

------
zmmmmm
I hope they don't get away with this. As a developer, I want to see the
Twitter story set a strong precedent that deters other companies from double
crossing the developer community. Between Google+ (which paid a price for
never letting developers on board at all) and Twitter (which prospered from
their hard work and then betrayed them) I hope future companies will have a
new understanding that if you want to be a platform for anything, embracing
3rd party developers and keeping faith with them has to be one of your top
priorities.

~~~
JohnTHaller
If you base your business entirely on the API of another company, your entire
business is at the mercy of that company and can be destroyed on a whim. This
is especially true of free APIs though it also applies to paid ones.

~~~
idibidiart
.... and it is evil on the part of the company providing the API to copy
features from the best apps written for that API and cut off those developers
by simply amending their ToS to say that such and such is not allowed... after
they've co-opted that feature.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Evil, standard industry practice. Pot-ay-to, pot-ah-to.

~~~
JohnTHaller
I think the tone of this comment was lost in translation. I'm not saying I
agree with this practice, it's abhorrent. But it has happened enough times
over the years that a company building something on top of a free API has to
basically expect things to go south like this.

------
vonklaus
Anyone burned by twitter will think twice about working on it again, _however_
it is likely too valuable of a platform to not give ample consideration to.

I reckon twitter will merge with square and provide end-to-end advertising
metrics for impressions --> clicks --> cart additions --> purchases. This will
be valuable, and as much as I think twitter is silly, if they provide this
they will do well.

Platform companies with stroes:

* Microsoft

* Google Play

* Apple

* [ empty ]

Super conflated and contrived appraisal here, but Twitter better post a strong
offering in empty before facebook and they can't do that well without square
and a platform or decentralized market. All this is to say, Twitter needs
developers _bad_ and to the extent they win them from Facebook and other
platforms will be tied to the value they provide. I think that value will be
provided by purchasing square in a merger of equals and building a dumb pipe
platform, letting developers curate the content and providing stores.

We'll see what developer sentiment is, first few comments lead me to beleive
it is _not great_.

~~~
em0ney
Interesting take on the future.

I agree about the current state of developer sentiment. I think anyone who
looks at a company like Microsoft will see that developer sentiment isn't
static. Might take years for things to change but I commend them for taking
the right first steps towards rectifying the situation.

------
muppetman
Why would you bother to come back after being kicked in the teeth, to a
platform that is now stagnating, showing little signs of growth and has no
obvious revenue model for app developers?

This is the cart before the horse. They need to fix Twitter so that people
want to develop for it again, not say "Hey, here's this downtrodden mess, come
and make it better for us!"

------
GhotiFish
This seems like it's almost too small of a world view. When twitter pulled the
rug out, it informed a shift in thinking, everywhere. Not just with twitter.

The wisdom became "Don't build your business on another one." and twitter was
the primary example of why not. For twitter to turn around and say "Ok, we
made some mistakes, and we want to develop that trust again." is
misunderstanding what happened.

twitter changed the conventional wisdom, not just wisdom about twitter.

~~~
mindcrime
_The wisdom became "Don't build your business on another one."_

That wisdom is WAY older than twitter. It may have become a fashionable meme
again because of Twitter, but platform risk has been around probably about as
long as computing. Certainly the idea goes back at least as far as the
infamous DOS/Lotus 1-2-3 dustup. Google "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run"
for example. Note that whether or not Microsoft _actually_ tried to break
Lotus 1-2-3 isn't the point. I'm just saying people have been aware of, and
talking about, these kinds of risks for a LONG time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, new generations often needs new lessons. I'm from the generation that
contains the majority of potential developers of sexy Twitter-based hot
unicorn Uber-for-Cloud-Based-Social-Gardening startups and I haven't ever
heard any stories about DOS/Lotus 1-2-3. Fortunately, Twitter made it up for
us.

 _" The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Startups
rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished.
Lotus were not the first. They did not create the Platform. They did not forge
the APIs. They merely found them - the legacy of my kind."_ \- Twitter CEO in
my twisted imagination.

------
Aissen
Here are a few things Twitter could do to gain developers trust again:

\- re-open the firehose. Let more people access it, even Gnip's (now
Twitter's) competitor.

\- remove the 100000+ users limit. Falcon Pro comes to mind, but since the
author now works for Twitter, their are probably other good examples out there

\- let developers monetize their apps using Twitter; maybe by providing a
shared ads model.

That's not the end of it, but that would be a good start.

------
BinaryIdiot
Hmm. So here's the problem.

Company allows others to build cool things on top of it. Sounds good. Then
others start making money from the stuff they build but Company isn't really
making money and the others are selling because they are filling in Company's
deficiencies around their product.

So how do you fix it so Company makes more money? Kill the others. That's why
the first wave of stuff died on Twitter's platform.

So what's different now? Has Twitter figured out how to make money and fill in
the gaps in Twitter? If they have then this could end up working out. If not,
how could things be different this time around?

Color me skeptical.

------
protomyth
If they had announced that developers can make twitter client apps and display
foreign services (e.g. instagram) in the same stream with the tweets without
limit to the number of end users, I would be interested. I just assume this is
a statement to the shareholders and will have very little effect on
developers.

------
nailer
The sad thing is that, for a brief period in 2010-2012, the Twitter API was
'hello world' for new developers. Iterating over friends, getting statuses,
etc. They had a great REST API and if you made a good thing you could sell it
(and Twitter's ecosystem would benefit). Now nobody trusts them.

------
cheald
Words are cheap. Until Twitter stops acting like "find someone using Twitter
successfully and punch them in the face" is a business model, it's all just
hot air.

It's not good enough for Twitter to "reset" the relationship. That ship has
sailed. There's going to have to be some serious groveling, wildly-generous
concessions, and guarantees of integrity moving forward if they want to
recapture what they once had.

    
    
        A little less conversation, a little more action please
        All this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me
        A little more bite and a little less bark
        A little less fight and a little more spark
        Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
        Satisfy me baby

------
mschuster91
First thing: remove those ridiculous usage limits for individual clients, so
that anyone using a 3rd party app can use it like he wants and not having the
app suddenly turned off because it reached 100k users.

------
__e
It's not just Twitter. Most popular APIs tend to regulate and constrain use as
they grow popular. This has dissuaded developers, and certainly startups from
building products on top of APIs. VCs do not like companies depending on third
party APIs either, due to the fact that they may be arm twisted by the API
service.

Twitter's attitude towards developers is potentially impacting the uptake of
libraries like Fabric, despite having nothing to do with their API. What
Twitter may have a shot at, as a result of this effort is to get usage of
their libraries like Fabric on par standing ground with libraries and products
like Parse from Facebook.

~~~
1ris
3-5 years ago everything had a API. No nothing has.

------
deveac
The tough thing is that the calculation developers make is a mixed bag of
components that involves not just trust, but fiscal opportunity. People's
fortunes and livelihoods are tied to developing for a platform. In some ways,
this ship may have sailed. Might be a situation where even if devs find a way
to regain some trust, the actual perceived value of the commitment these days
isn't as alluring.

The question is, what has _fundamentally changed_ about Twitter's _business
model_ that has now re-aligned its incentives to better match those of the
developer community to _enable_ them to make this promise today?

Anything?

------
IanDrake
Twitter would have to decentralize their system to court developers again.
That means creating a protocol and an open source server that implements the
protocol.

Twitter is basically an inverted email system anyway. So there is no technical
reason why it can't be structured more like email. They could make money like
google does with gmail, but as a user I could sign up with any provider or
even host my own server.

Then it might get interesting. To me the only thing twitter has of value is
mind share ("tweet", "follow", etc...) and this approach is the only way they
can leverage it to profit in the long run.

~~~
webmaven
Yeah, my #helloworld ask is that they do this (for example by implementing
OStatus).

~~~
webmaven
Link to my two #helloworld tweets:

[https://twitter.com/nerdworldorder/status/657073820801470464](https://twitter.com/nerdworldorder/status/657073820801470464)

[https://twitter.com/nerdworldorder/status/657640450879332354](https://twitter.com/nerdworldorder/status/657640450879332354)

------
xenadu02
There is nothing about the 100,000 token limit that makes any sense. People
present it as Twitter wanting to "control the core experience". That's
bullshit and always has been.

Twitter could have easily said "we will serve ads in this format. All apps
that want to use the API must display the ads according to rules XYZ".
Congrats! Now you can monetize and app developers can keep innovating.

The whole Twitter client fiasco remains one of the dumbest moves and for
nonsensical reasons that Twitter itself could have easily solved.

I saw nothing in this announcement that addresses this problem or changes any
policies related to it.

------
manghoti
> Going forward, the company says it will improve its communication with
> developers. “We want to make sure that we have a great relationship with our
> developers, an open and honest relationship with our developers,” he said.

I'm curious why this kind of language hasn't fallen out of favor. It sounds so
completely empty to me, I have to assume it does for everyone else.

~~~
mcnamaratw
It doesn't have to work on everybody. You only need a good solid group who
hear what they want to hear.

------
dasil003
Sorry Jack, I believe in Twitter's future as a user, but I'll be _damned_ if I
give it one ounce of control over mine. That bridge is burnt. If you want us
to trust you, go do another startup and toe the line from beginning to end.
Because at this point, almost anything cool that Twitter does will be seen as
a failure by current investors. Nothing short of being the next Facebook will
satisfy them, and Facebook knows damn well it can't afford to try anything
cool anymore.

------
sgoraya
The recent Standford ETL talk by Jeff Seibert (Senior Director of Product at
Twitter) provides some insight into the development of the Twitter API's/SDK
(Fabric). Overall, I thought it was one of the better and more practical
talks.

[http://goo.gl/WfAiPU](http://goo.gl/WfAiPU)

------
drawkbox
Lose the developers, lose the platform.

Dorsey is making a smart move here but can it be reversed? When twitter
started and now when it is down they wanted/want developers, back when it went
gangbusters they booted the devs. Engineering lost control of twitter
internally, developer love was the first to go.

------
DigitalSea
Here we go again. How many times has Twitter sworn to change and treat
developers with the respect they deserve? I've lost count. Actions speak
louder than words, for starters Dorsey needs to amend those restrictive terms.
Twitter is a great platform with a trove of data not only for research
purposes, but for creating third party clients and more.

It is time for Twitter and Dorsey to prove they've changed. Twitter will
continue to fail without developer support. Look at how successful Facebook
has been nurturing the developer community. Basically every site has a login
with Facebook button now.

------
Animats
QNX did something like this years ago. They had a free version, then went
partially open source, then went closed source, then went fully open source
(you could download the kernel sources), then suddenly went totally closed
source after being acquired by Blackberry.

There are few remaining QNX developers.

------
methehack
I have found Michael Porter's Five Forces a useful tool when reasoning about
supplier power. I think supplier power and how we respond to it is the
interesting topic here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis#Ba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis#Bargaining_power_of_suppliers)

In general, ya gotta be real careful. Somehow, you have to counteract the
entity's supplier power with your very own buyer power. If you can't do that,
you won't likely last. Or more specifically: whether or not you last will
depend entirely on the other guy. It will have nothing to do with your own
efforts (however vigorous), skill (however impressive), or cleverness (however
clevererer).

One thing I know is irrelevant: whether or not you think the company will act
as a 'good citizen'. Thinking about a company as if it were a person has
little predictive value. Thinking about a company as if its 'Hal' from 2001 --
now we're talkin'. More like a clever psycho no conscience AI on a secret
mission that it views as way more important than whatever you happen to be
doing with your Saturday's -- that's more like it. This applies twice to
public companies (like, remarkably, twitter) as by that point everyone takes
the fiduciary thing really very quite most seriously.

------
pavornyoh
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Apologizing is a good step
and most will forgive but never forget.

~~~
deveac
_> You only get one chance to make a first impression._

Same problem they are facing with the _massive_ number of users that tried
Twitter and abandoned it. Much easier to acquire a new user than to re-acquire
an old user that has already decided against.

------
mmanfrin
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...

~~~
gaius
... Won't get fooled again.

------
baldajan
I wish Dorsey's apology came with some real change, to their ToS for example
and immediate reversal of bad decisions. Rather than just, tweet what would
you like to see.

Actions speak louder than words, no matter how small.

------
randomsearch
So here's what Twitter should do:

1\. Allow devs to create third party twitter clients. No limits, no
restrictions. The loss of dev trust is so big that they need to do something
this huge. If they don't do this, I think Twitter will be forced to sell to a
bigger company within 18 months.

Allowing third party twitter clients will quickly kill the official clients,
as they're a heap of junk from a UX POV. It doesn't matter that Twitter won't
control that. People who think this matters seem to think that Twitter is
another Facebook. I can't emphasise strongly enough that Twitter is not a
Facebook.

2\. Make money selling licenses to third parties for data analysis. Change the
licensing and make it cheaper. Make it affordable for small developers.
Encourage an explosion of innovation in the way tweets are used. Work with
these people to offer a better structure for tweets that will help them
develop their applications. Then you're the data provider for a huge
ecosystem, with a feedback loop that ensures the data increases in value over
time.

People seem to not be able to find specific value in twitter's data, but I can
see huge potential. Here are some no-brainer examples:

\- emergency management (this is being done, all over the world, and it works)

\- data-mining comments about companies for feedback.

\- recommendation services.

I can think of much more valuable ideas, but as I know people working on
startups in this area, I won't share them.

I also don't understand why Twitter have not "app"-ed their platform or
partitioned it so that companies can have their own subplatforms. Maybe it's
because the official clients are terrible at handling such data.

Man, I could go on... but what a challenge it will be to turn this mess into
something meaningful.

------
pasbesoin
Fool me once...

I hope many people have instead learned to generalize the earlier message, in
the last some years. Crudely but aptly stated: "Don't be a sharecropper."

------
partiallypro
Maybe they can stop screwing over smaller twitter apps with their stupidly
expensive token threshold. Windows had quite a few good Twitter clients, like
MetroTwit that Twitter put out of business simply because they priced them out
with their token limits.

------
mesozoic
I'm sorry that you felt confused by your inability to understand our corporate
decisions that were best for us at the time.

------
wmeredith
Fool me once: shame on you. Fool me twice: shame on me.

------
pm24601
I stopped really looking at APIs ever since Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
started restricting the usefulness and access to them.

Its been a long time since I really thought about building any business on
quicksand.

Now a days when I use an external API, I make sure it is not core to the
product. If the relationship changes with the external provider, I need an
escape that does not impact my product.

Which means of course that the external API cannot be "essential" \- and in
startup land "not essential" == "do not do"

------
hoodoof
This relationship has come to an end. It's not just that trust is now gone
between Twitter and developers, it's that developers at around this time came
to realise that building on someone else's platform always carries the risk
that the CEO of the day will pull the rug. Or even worse, that some unnamed
front line worker in the "app approvals departments" will pull the rug with no
recourse.

Twitter is foolish for trying to get this going again. The love affair ended,
time for new things.

------
waterlesscloud
Sorry, Jack. I had a lot of ideas for leveraging your info 5 years ago.

Still do, in fact. It's not like Twitter has done any of it.

But.

I. Simply. Can. Not. Trust. Twitter.

So, enjoy your floundering.

------
SEJeff
He should apologize a bit more sincerely to the developers he just laid off.

------
aikah
Twitter and Facebook are 2 different products, the latter being a social
network ,the former a "social network message bus" since relationships and
streams are public by default.

Well Twitter should embrace that fact instead pulling the plug on successful
Twitter based products and offer paid plans for business who want to build on
top of twitter.

~~~
dave_ops
This is actually a good idea I think. Salesforce Chatter is a thing, and it
sells well, and it's also terrible.

An on-prem corporate twitter would actually be useful.

------
cruise02
It's not officially Fall until Lucy pulls away the football.

------
slackstation
It wasn't as he said "confusing and unpredictable" it was manipulative and
desperate. Let a bunch of developers figure out ways to monetize on Twitter
then cut off their access and duplicate their strategies. Empty words.

Let me know if they want to give contractual guarantees that certain APIs will
be available.

------
Xyik
I thought CEOs were supposed to be decisive. Why don't I see anything
actionable here.

------
TheRealDunkirk
"Forget it. I'll build my own Twitter. With hookers. And blackjack."

------
fapjacks
I can't think of anything to say here except "Fuck you, dude".

------
milge
Too little, too late. But thanks for the important lesson of not building
something on Twitter's platform when the rug can be pulled out from under you.
That lesson applies to other platforms too.

------
rebel
It really seems like this is where you should have some sort of concrete
contract/agreement to reassure developers. Without that, I can't see how
anyone could trust them.

~~~
LoSboccacc
especially when it comes from a temporary position ion the chart and tos
clearly states tos can be changed unilaterally at any time

[https://dev.twitter.com/overview/terms/agreement-and-
policy](https://dev.twitter.com/overview/terms/agreement-and-policy)

------
metaphorm
talk is cheap. until we see substantive change from Twitter, such as changing
their ToS, or re-instating previously suspended apps, its all just talk.

I don't think the community of developers should be willing to work with
Twitter going forward. they blew it. they've done nothing to earn a "reset" in
their developer relations. if anything their product now is significantly
worse and less appealing to integrate with than it has been in the past.

------
slater
Now can they bring back RSS feeds?

------
chris_wot
This is going to sound a bit churlish, but how does Twitter make money? Sure,
there are some sponsorships, but what actual product do they sell?

------
vph
Personally, I have never trusted these social network companies in terms of
working with/for the platforms. Sure, when they are in trouble, when they need
developers, they will say things like this. And when they are strong, they
will close up and can't care less about their developers. It's the same with
Facebook, etc.

------
webmaven
Here is my request that they actually follow through on their original promise
to federate with compatible implementations:
[https://twitter.com/nerdworldorder/status/657073820801470464](https://twitter.com/nerdworldorder/status/657073820801470464)

~~~
webmaven
And to be clear, implementing OStatus
([http://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/wiki/Main_Page](http://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/wiki/Main_Page))
is probably the best way to move this forward.

------
cft
Does this apply to Meerkat ban for example?

~~~
MichaelGG
Eh they need to prevent spammy apps like FB had to. Meerkat knew it was acting
improperly but hey, "growth hacking".

------
lnanek2
Pretty empty apology. If they want to do something meaningful for developers,
why don't they remove the user login token restrictions, for example? Several
famously successful API using apps hit that and suffered. Just apologizing is
pointless, you have to actually change the bad policies.

------
catshirt
this sounds like a fish flopping around on land, looking for purpose, and
developers to help it make money

------
mcnamaratw
I predict the "culture of chill" will lead to a substantial minority of
younger developers wandering in and giving their stuff away for no benefit a
second time.

I mean ... you aren't ... mad ... bro?

Of course not. We're cool. Glad we had this talk.

------
hartator
Stupid question, how was Twitter bad with external developers?

I've built a few services using Twitter, Facebook and Google+ each time and I
didn't have anything bad to say about Twitter, they were always the easiest to
deal with.

~~~
OJFord
It wasn't with those things - that's what they want you to do.

It was appalling with developers of Twitter clients suddenly introducing
harsher rate limiting, and a user cap per API key (meaning any growth in the
app was severely limited, or even non-existent if already popular).

------
jeena
Too late Twitter,
[https://github.com/jeena/Twittia](https://github.com/jeena/Twittia) is dead
once and for all!

------
blantonl
Why do people feel they are entitled to perpetual API access?

If you want to build your business on the back of someone else who is doing
the heavy lifting, then don't be surprised when they rear up and no longer let
you ride.

Maybe Twitter should follow the lead that I do - those that license and use
many of my APIs pay on a royalty model - they pay a certain percentage of all
revenue that their platform generates. Period.

I predict that Twitter will regress back to owning their platform after this
minor blip.

------
at-fates-hands
Well this article is a bit click baity.

The original article they reference is from 2012 and talks about the API
changes and Twitter's choice to shut down apps it feels are competing with its
own app.

All I got out of the current article was Jack trying to woo developers back
without any hint of what exactly they're changing to be more developer
friendly. If I was burned by them in 2012, I doubt this would get rid of any
lingering doubts I had about working on their platform.

------
oldpond
So, why is there still only one "Twitter"? Why has it not been forked? Please
enlighten me.

------
jv22222
Fool me once... (is said 7 times in these HN comments, wonder why)

------
iamleppert
A day late and a dollar short. I wouldn't be caught dead developing on their
API ever again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Swift death be to you, Twitter.

------
jpatel3
He speaks like a manger in corporate..

------
f1nch3r
That was quite the big city apology.

------
tacos
If you're building a business on Twitter's back you're fuckin' nuts. Twitter
can't even build a business on Twitter.

~~~
adventured
Why isn't a $2+ billion sales run-rate with 50%+ annual growth a business?

They'll match the sales that Salesforce had for fiscal 2014, within eight to
ten quarters, even assuming slower growth.

~~~
gaius
Because they are burning cash every quarter anyway? Anyone can buy revenue.

------
vegabook
This company seems to be lurching from one PR disaster to another. I have
never seriously developed a twitter API-based application because as long ago
as 2012 the restrictions were already on the uptrend, and the writing was on
the wall for anybody betting their application on the Twitter ecosystem. Throw
in the declining quality of the average tweet and you have a recipe for a
company which opened up a new Internet use case, but never capitalised on it
(as others adopt its MO). It reminds me of Xerox Parc, in that in invented
something awesome without really understanding what it had created, nor how to
use it properly.

In my view, Twitter = Yahoo. It won't die, it got there first, but it didn't
really "get it", and so it will never win.

------
cowardlydragon
Didn't they just fire a bunch of their own?

------
mcantelon
Nah, what Twitter _really_ needs is moar ideology-based censorship. That'll
fix evvverything.

------
libria
Why are so many developers naive about this?

Twitter has a responsibility to its employees & shareholders to turn a profit.
In some stages, courting developers will make sense, and in others, not. A lot
of developers are taking it like a jilted lover. This is a business
relationship, and it is neither personal nor permanent. If you can build on
their platform today, reap the success while it lasts. For some of you, that
uncertainty is not worth the investment. Great! Just stop expecting Twitter to
sacrifice business health to keep one group of partners happy.

~~~
swang
No one is naive about this. I think we all know why he made this announcement
today.

I think in a business relationship (just like in almost any relationship), you
don't want to get screwed over. Developers got screwed over by Twitter.

You want this to be a business relationship? Then write out an SLA for
developers. Otherwise apologizing and inviting developers is just lip service.

I love what they have done with open source, I just don't trust them enough to
develop stuff on their api (short of twitter bots and the like).

~~~
libria
The problem is that some of these responses contain words like "trust" and
"morally bankrupt" which shows we're still emotionally reliant on some
unwritten rules of fair treatment. We have to conduct business without that
emotion.

Show me a company who will not screw you, given the right (wrong?)
circumstance. Yet we must partner with some of them temporarily to succeed. We
should be gambling on whether or not they can build a viable business going
forward, not whether they will ditch us in tough times because they absolutely
will.

~~~
Dylan16807
[lack of] trust is just a measure of likelihood of them violating promises.
It's not naivete.

"Morally bankrupt" is just an insulting way of saying the company is much more
likely to abandon agreements, and will do so with weaker justification.

And plenty of companies won't ditch you in tough times. Imagine if insurance
tried to just walk away when you filed a claim.

