The announcement told Twitter developers to stop building new consumer-oriented Twitter client applications. Enterprise-oriented Twitter tools like Seesmic and HootSuite are still more than welcome, as are special-purpose apps that interact with Twitter, like Instagram. But the average user’s core experience of sending and reading tweets is something that Twitter wants to standardize, and control.
Since Twitter itself reports that 90% of users already use official Twitter apps, it may seem like no big deal if that other 10% will see their alternatives contract. Twitter even has said that existing non-official apps can continue. Even though these developers have now been told that “we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service.”
And Twitter is still encouraging the development of applications that extend or complement the core Twitter experience. So what’s the big deal?
The big deal is the end of Twitter’s pro-developer stance. When Twitter burst on the scene, it was on the strength of an API (application programming interface) that made it extremely easy for developers to create a wide range of user experiences and tools. Twitter was a lego board rather than destination. Twitter is a way for people to build something expansive rather than color within the lines.
Its extensibility allowed Twitter to challenge Facebook effectively. In contrast to Facebook’s very locked-down user experience, Twitter offered a way for developers — and by extension, users — to create a variety of interfaces, features and even art projects. The fact that Twitter reports there are now 750,000 (!!) applications using its interface is a testament to the success of that strategy. True, many Twitter users never (consciously) touch an unofficial Twitter app, but they are being fed, counted, pitched, contested, serenaded and otherwise engaged by influencers, power users and marketers who rely on Twitter’s developer ecosystem. That ecosystem is in a constant process of innovation and experimentation, constantly uncovering new ways to put 140 characters to creative use.
But there’s a reason “creative chaos” is a well-worn phrase. Creativity gets messy. Messiness is fine when you’re a bootstrapping startup, but once you’re a social networking behemoth with hundreds of millions of users and a multi-billion-dollar valuation, messiness equals risk. The risk of turning off even one percent of your users (that’s 2 million people for Twitter) carries bottom-line costs. The strategy of letting a thousand flowers bloom starts to look a little less attractive.
Twitter’s announcement, then, is nothing more or less than the sound of a startup moving from adolescence into adulthood. It’s the same thing we saw when Facebook, which initially encouraged widespread participation in the development of Facebook Applications, began to reshape its platform in favor of developers who were focused on building for Facebook.
If that seems like bad news for at some Twitter developers, and by extension, for Twitter users, it may be great news for the social media ecosystem, because those developers cut off by Twitter move on and create the next challenger to the big, locked down platforms.
Because people are only going to spend so many hours of the day online, and even in 2010, people were starting to make clear choices about where to spend that time. If you got in quickly and provided your audience with a reason to make your community one of their daily destinations, you’d get them invested in a set of relationships that would make it hard for them to leave. If you took your time, they’d make that investment elsewhere, and you’d have a hard time wooing them away.
Facebook proved this right, and then Twitter proved this wrong.
With Facebook we saw people and early stage investors like us, make such an investment in a single online community, a one-stop shop for all their online relationships, that it was hard to imagine how a new social network would ever challenge its dominance. And then Twitter launched, and did just that: wooed millions of people into daily engagement with a network that cut into their Facebook time, or even replaced it.
The rapid emergence of Facebook and then Twitter as major marketing channels drives the fear that there will always be a Next Big Thing, that as soon as you master one social media channel, the next one will pop up and require you to learn a whole new set of tools, and acquire a whole new set of relationships.
The fact that Twitter was an even better investment for us because it was done at angel phase of the business, only proves the hypothesis.
But the question needs to be asked:
How do You keep up?
There will always be a next thing, but there may not be a Next Big Thing.
Or if there ois how do you recognize it…
There is always a window of opportunity to observe.
And one must act before this closes. Just before it closes is when you get the best dibs for the least amount of effort and capital with the greatest bang for your buck.
For the same reason that the online community window was closing in 2008, the social network window is closing now too. But the Social local Media window opens up…
Proof otf this follows:
People and investors are invested in Facebook. People and investors are invested in Twitter. You may choose to include emergent tools like FourSquare or Groupon in your marketing or investment plans, but there probably won’t be another must-use social network like Facebook or Twitter any time soon. Mainly because those millions of users already have made their choices and their social media hours and lifestyle demands are largely spoken for.
But then Twitter just came out and announced the end of its reign as the great Facebook disruptor.
What the fuck for?
It was, the last really big social network to rapidly attract hundreds of millions of users and wanted to secure an exit…
In business as in comedy and sex, timing is everything…
So Twitter just killed the goose…
Of course, that’s not what it intended to do: on the contrary, Twitter’s big announcement was a step towards ensuring the long-term viability of its platform.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
That challenger could learn a lesson from the backlash that has greeted last Friday’s announcement: impose limits on your developer community at your own peril. But I doubt it will. After all, Facebook has hardly suffered from Twitter’s emergence, and Twitter is unlikely to be undone by alienating people who know the definition of API. A network emerges, grows up, locks down: it was ever thus.
