
Facebook cuts off friend-finding API access to Vine - ericyan
http://allthingsd.com/20130124/facebook-cuts-off-friend-finding-access-to-vine-twitters-new-video-app/
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DigitalSea
I guess karma is a bitch. I have no sympathy for Twitter as they've pulled
similar moves that have screwed over third party developers as well. What goes
around, comes around and it's Twitter's turn to get a taste of their own
medicine.

This isn't a deal breaker for me using Vine, I've found it to be a really fun
application I think is going to take off. and definitely compete with
Instagram.

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untog
Shrug. I don't usually take Facebook's side on things, but Twitter should
expect this kind of response after shutting out third party developers
themselves.

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tomasien
I say "booooooo!" not because I'm some user-first purest, but because I think
this is just a bad idea. Facebook and Twitter DON'T need to be at war. They
just don't. They're different, and they always will be.

Twitter deserves no sympathy, but I don't think Facebook needs to be doing
this, with Instagram OR to Vine.

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onedev
They're not at war from a user-facing product sense, but they are completely
at war from an advertising and brand promotion standpoint.

Each wants to make their own social platform more attractive for advertisers.
Things like this affect that notion.

But I agree in that they certainly are being more aggressive towards each
other.

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tomasien
They're more likely to help each other than hurt each other, but I think
that's hard to see. They're competition is other advertising media, not each
other. Their ads are getting them profitable, but if either ever hits on an ad
model for social that works as well as adwords does for search, the other will
copy it and they'll both benefit.

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onedev
Hm, interesting perspective.

Out of curiosity what other media do you think is _significantly_ competing
with them? I mean besides Google.

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tomasien
I don't think Google is really competing with them, Google wins because they
make TONS of money on ads when people are clearly actively trying to buy
something. Those ads cost tons of money if you ever run such a campaign you'll
see it.

They're competing with TV I think more than anything, the sort of "brand
recognition" advertising that is more nebulous and hard to measure.

"My friend likes this brand" may annoy you, but it means something to me. When
I've seen that in Facebook ads, I remember it. It may be years before that
matters to my purchases, but that's how brands invest in TV advertising now,
and if they can figure out to objectively show that Facebook advertising does
that better, their ad spends will explode.

It's only that, because TV was the ONLY place for this for so long and
therefore brands were able to measure the effect of this advertising other
time, that TV ads were able to be proven to work, even for ads not directed at
people literally looking to buy RIGHT NOW. Internet ads have had a problem
proving their ROI in this regard, but if Facebook or Twitter figure this out,
it's going to be huge.

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OGinparadise
_I don't think Google is really competing with them, Google wins because they
make TONS of money on ads when people are clearly actively trying to buy
something. Those ads cost tons of money if you ever run such a campaign you'll
see it._

OK, but even if FB takes 10% from Google it's enough to rain on their parade.
I can see FB do a decent SE with Bing as backfill for what it cannot provide.
If the search engine is decent (bing is OK for most people) and they emphasize
the "Search" button, I can see a % of people not going to another site to
search.

P.S. Most of the money Google makes is probably by making ads similar to
content, hoping enough users can't tell. But we have no consumer protection in
USA.

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flexxaeon
I've never 100% understood why these social networks were so integrated. It's
normal to me now, but years ago the concept of facebook.com/twitter and
twitter.com/facebook would scramble the business side of my mind. Especially
when I think back to how solid of a line was drawn between Myspace and
Facebook

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ajaymehta
I just downloaded Vine 10 minutes ago, and assumed this was a launch bug in
their app.

My thoughts after seeing this: wow, what a cheap shot by FB and I feel for the
Vine team getting caught in this crossfire (I gather it's still their small
startup team inside of Twitter).

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flexxaeon
My guess is Twitter/Vine anticipated Facebook would likely block them, and
built the feature in any way. If they didn't get blocked, gravy. If they did
they gain some sympathy points (points they have been losing lately).

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hezhit
Not the first time, Facebook cuts off almost all APIs to Wechat. At one time
Wechat even cannot use the access token to get user's id for login
verification. Every API returns "data:[]".

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spdy
Walled garden wars 2.0. Dont let anyone become a threat in any form. Instead
they both should evolve to social service providers but they rather cut off
each others arms.

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tectonic
And, again, the people they're really hurting are the users.

