You are viewing the 3rd party clients as a negative. This was their greatest asset. Instead of destroying them, why not give them an SDK? If they put that SDK to show promoted tweets and other adverts in the stream, they could have sold far more inventory and still have all the metrics they need to show advertisers.
Instead, they destroyed them, destroyed the user growth they provided, destroyed the engagement they provided, and worse destroyed far more earnings potential they could have had if they instead just worked with all the clients to get the ad placements in there. They tried to copy Facebook and how they did things, but instead destroyed their most prized asset.
The SDK would only be able to show the advertisers that the ads where pushed to the clients, not that it was actually shown. So I doubt that would sit well with advertisers. Even if tracking normal online ads is just as sketchy.
Still don't feel it like would have made much of a difference. Twitter still have more than enough traffic, on which is fails to monetize.
And again, what's wrong with paying for Twitter? $20 per year for personal account, $300 for businesses.
The SDK would only be able to show the advertisers that the ads where pushed to the clients, not that it was actually shown.
The apps themselves wouldn't have been anonymous. If many of one's ads were seen through TwitView3000, one might have had reason to examine TwitView3000 to see how ads were handled in that app. If one had discovered that ads were dropped, a single phone call would have been enough to revoke the app's API key.
Completely agree. An SDK with advertising that led to revenue for the developers would have been a major boon.... and potentially unlocked a lot of innovative ideas and approaches.
Instead, they destroyed them, destroyed the user growth they provided, destroyed the engagement they provided, and worse destroyed far more earnings potential they could have had if they instead just worked with all the clients to get the ad placements in there. They tried to copy Facebook and how they did things, but instead destroyed their most prized asset.