It almost seems like Elon Musk has forgotten about path dependency, which maybe makes sense since he other companies basically don't require you to think about path dependency, you build a new factory or design a new car or rocket. I think most people agree there's a problem for Twitter as a business that these third party apps exist. These apps sap Twitter's ad revenue, they become an intermediary between Twitter and it's highest value users. What happens, for instance, if one of these apps suddenly start mixing Facebook/Instagram/Mastodon into users feeds? Ouch! Also, it impacts how your new feature roll outs happen. So, you need to own the app that all your customers use.
But you need an actual plan to get people to move from the third party app to the first party. You know, figure out why the third party apps are used, build some equivalent features and lure users back. Instead Elon Musk's plan is just "let's break that". Well ok, but you haven't actually managed to get people to come back to your first party app, you've just broken their experience of twitter. Well done, you've broken twitter for your most valuable users. Do you think, having broken the service with no notice at all, and with no viable app that they want to use, that they're going to use your first party app? No! They're just going to fucking leave! What do you think all those developers who were writing great twitter clients are going to do now? You could have hired them, you could have had them writing great twitter clients for you. No instead, you've forced them all to go off and write clients for your competitors social networks. This move has single handedly created the largest developer community for Mastodon.
So yes, we're finally at the point where Twitter is best used through the first party app. We've achieved that by losing the majority of the high value users that you were worried about on the 3rd party app in the first place.
But you need an actual plan to get people to move from the third party app to the first party. You know, figure out why the third party apps are used, build some equivalent features and lure users back. Instead Elon Musk's plan is just "let's break that". Well ok, but you haven't actually managed to get people to come back to your first party app, you've just broken their experience of twitter. Well done, you've broken twitter for your most valuable users. Do you think, having broken the service with no notice at all, and with no viable app that they want to use, that they're going to use your first party app? No! They're just going to fucking leave! What do you think all those developers who were writing great twitter clients are going to do now? You could have hired them, you could have had them writing great twitter clients for you. No instead, you've forced them all to go off and write clients for your competitors social networks. This move has single handedly created the largest developer community for Mastodon.
So yes, we're finally at the point where Twitter is best used through the first party app. We've achieved that by losing the majority of the high value users that you were worried about on the 3rd party app in the first place.