Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Providing you don't participate in any spamming, I would think your application is perfectly safe. On 13 Mar 2011, at 11:51, Dustin Lennon wrote: I guess what I would like to know is since I'm a hobbyist, am I going to get my token revoked just because I write a client that is just for my use to better my skills in learning a specific programming language and share with others things I've learned. -Dustin This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:22 AM, Rich rhyl...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Raffi So if I'm reading what you wrote correctly, simple clients that just display a timeline, post etc are thinking too small and there is no business there, something I can agree with. However many of us have, what I'd call a value added client. Sure we have the basics of a client, but we have what I'd like to think are added value services such as tweet scheduling, augmented reality of tweeters around you, user streams, draft management, and so much more. Are we to think that these are actually going to be fine for the time being, so long as obviously we comply with the ToS. What you guys seem to be saying though is don't build clients because it won't make money, but some people seem to fail to grasp some of us develop apps like this because we enjoy it... it's a hobby and a passion and that doesn't always involve tons of profit. Services such as Seesmic started out in the simple Client business, remember Twhirl, etc. Sure they grew into something enterprise, but most of us start out at the bottom and with the basics. Richard On Mar 13, 2:39 am, Raffi Krikorian ra...@twitter.com wrote: in reading your blog post, i think you're misunderstanding what @*rsarver*wrote. the API is open -- i personally love seeing all the innovation around getting content into twitter (/1/status/update). there is a cafe in france who's oven tweets whenever its done baking. that uses the platform to get content in there. there was a NYU project that enabled your plants to tweet when they needed water. that uses the platform to get content into twitter. then there are people who match tweets to context. seeing twitter in action with a television show, or a newspaper article, or a conference, or a band -- that's how people really understand and get twitter. they see it through the lens of what's happening in the world. what @*rsarver* said, effectively, was building a business around *simply*rendering /1/statuses/home_timeline was probably-not-the-best-thing-to-do. please go still innovate. just don't bet money on simply making an API call to grabbing a user's home_timeline and rendering it. that's thinking too small, and @*rsarver* is telling you that. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Shannon Whitley shannon.whit...@gmail.comwrote: I was hoping that Ryan was just a few weeks early for his April Fools' post. Don't build clients? It sounds like a bad joke. I wrote a letter to Ryan on my blog in response to this post: http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2011/03/a-letter-to-rya... I know you guys can't be serious about this. Stage a mutiny if you have to, but don't let this boneheaded decision stand. -- Raffi Krikorian Twitter, Application Serviceshttp://twitter.com/raffi -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Agreed. On Mar 13, 2011, at 4:58, Scott Wilcox sc...@dor.ky wrote: Providing you don't participate in any spamming, I would think your application is perfectly safe. On 13 Mar 2011, at 11:51, Dustin Lennon wrote: I guess what I would like to know is since I'm a hobbyist, am I going to get my token revoked just because I write a client that is just for my use to better my skills in learning a specific programming language and share with others things I've learned. -Dustin This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:22 AM, Rich rhyl...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Raffi So if I'm reading what you wrote correctly, simple clients that just display a timeline, post etc are thinking too small and there is no business there, something I can agree with. However many of us have, what I'd call a value added client. Sure we have the basics of a client, but we have what I'd like to think are added value services such as tweet scheduling, augmented reality of tweeters around you, user streams, draft management, and so much more. Are we to think that these are actually going to be fine for the time being, so long as obviously we comply with the ToS. What you guys seem to be saying though is don't build clients because it won't make money, but some people seem to fail to grasp some of us develop apps like this because we enjoy it... it's a hobby and a passion and that doesn't always involve tons of profit. Services such as Seesmic started out in the simple Client business, remember Twhirl, etc. Sure they grew into something enterprise, but most of us start out at the bottom and with the basics. Richard On Mar 13, 2:39 am, Raffi Krikorian ra...@twitter.com wrote: in reading your blog post, i think you're misunderstanding what @*rsarver*wrote. the API is open -- i personally love seeing all the innovation around getting content into twitter (/1/status/update). there is a cafe in france who's oven tweets whenever its done baking. that uses the platform to get content in there. there was a NYU project that enabled your plants to tweet when they needed water. that uses the platform to get content into twitter. then there are people who match tweets to context. seeing twitter in action with a television show, or a newspaper article, or a conference, or a band -- that's how people really understand and get twitter. they see it through the lens of what's happening in the world. what @*rsarver* said, effectively, was building a business around *simply*rendering /1/statuses/home_timeline was probably-not-the-best-thing-to-do. please go still innovate. just don't bet money on simply making an API call to grabbing a user's home_timeline and rendering it. that's thinking too small, and @*rsarver* is telling you that. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Shannon Whitley shannon.whit...@gmail.comwrote: I was hoping that Ryan was just a few weeks early for his April Fools' post. Don't build clients? It sounds like a bad joke. I wrote a letter to Ryan on my blog in response to this post: http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2011/03/a-letter-to-rya... I know you guys can't be serious about this. Stage a mutiny if you have to, but don't let this boneheaded decision stand. -- Raffi Krikorian Twitter, Application Serviceshttp://twitter.com/raffi -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group:
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms. The Opportunity for Developers Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no. Reviewing the API TOS at http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms, it seems to be more generously worded than was Ryan's post. -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Hello, For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown. Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term. I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users. The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered. Scott. On 13 Mar 2011, at 00:16, Adam Green wrote: Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan), so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference. I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account? Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app? Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets? If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple. Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Duane Roelands duane.roela...@gmail.com wrote: Wow. Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now get lost. This is appalling. -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Adam Green Twitter API Consultant and Trainer http://140dev.com @140dev -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
I agree, Scott. Ryan didn't say you can't post tweets, but everyone heard that. Every tech blog repeated it. Ryan should take a minute and explain that it isn't true. That much would help a lot. He led by saying don't build a client. That is where people stopped reading. I don't think he meant to tell people that apps can't tweet, but he did give that impression. Now he should come back and say, Sorry guys. I gave you the wrong impression. Here are specifically the things you can still do. Don't just point to companies with $10M in VC funds each and say No problem, just be like them. These are API developers. Say it in terms of the API. Exactly which API calls are still allowed. If he says statuses/update is still allowed, then that answers the question. There is no ambiguity. As for Twitter being free. Yes. The API is, but denying the value that products like Tweetdeck gave Twitter *for free* is denying the reality of how Twitter got to where it is. It is called a partnership. They give us raw materials, we add value to them. We all benefit. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Scott Wilcox sc...@dor.ky wrote: Hello, For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown. Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term. I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users. The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered. Scott. On 13 Mar 2011, at 00:16, Adam Green wrote: Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan), so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference. I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account? Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app? Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets? If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple. Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Duane Roelands duane.roela...@gmail.comwrote: Wow. Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now get lost. This is appalling. -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Adam Green Twitter API Consultant and Trainer http://140dev.com @140dev -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker:
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Adam, that is a totally incorrect characterization of the companies I listed in the email. A ton of those companies -- CoTweet, Klout, HootSuite, Socialflow -- sprung out of the ecosystem and were started on nights and weekends with no funding. Of course they have gotten some funding now as investors see them as great potential businesses. Of course statuses/update is still allowed. As is statuses/user_timeline. We've added more policies and given guidance that we don't think there is a business in building consumer clients, but none of the APIs have changed. -- Ryan Sarver @rsarver http://twitter.com/rsarver On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Adam Green 140...@gmail.com wrote: I agree, Scott. Ryan didn't say you can't post tweets, but everyone heard that. Every tech blog repeated it. Ryan should take a minute and explain that it isn't true. That much would help a lot. He led by saying don't build a client. That is where people stopped reading. I don't think he meant to tell people that apps can't tweet, but he did give that impression. Now he should come back and say, Sorry guys. I gave you the wrong impression. Here are specifically the things you can still do. Don't just point to companies with $10M in VC funds each and say No problem, just be like them. These are API developers. Say it in terms of the API. Exactly which API calls are still allowed. If he says statuses/update is still allowed, then that answers the question. There is no ambiguity. As for Twitter being free. Yes. The API is, but denying the value that products like Tweetdeck gave Twitter *for free* is denying the reality of how Twitter got to where it is. It is called a partnership. They give us raw materials, we add value to them. We all benefit. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Scott Wilcox sc...@dor.ky wrote: Hello, For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown. Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term. I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users. The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered. Scott. On 13 Mar 2011, at 00:16, Adam Green wrote: Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan), so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference. I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account? Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app? Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets? If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple. Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Duane Roelands duane.roela...@gmail.com wrote: Wow. Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now get lost. This is appalling. -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker:
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Scott, I don't think it's ludicrous to think that Twitter may eventually pull the plug on, say, statuses/home_timeline, effectively eliminating clients. If Twitter's concern is ad revenue, all they'd need to do is add a clause to their TOS specifying that all third-party clients must show in-line ads or the quickbar or whatever else Twitter uses to generate revenue. Then the issue is very clear for developers -- either integrate Twitter's revenue-producing content into your client, or don't make a client at all. The fact that they seem to be going about this a different way, and being a bit unclear as to what might happen to a client-only app, leaves open the possibility that they simply want to close down the market so the only access to one's timeline is via a first-party app. Scott Wilcox wrote: Hello, For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown. Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term. I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users. The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered. Scott. On 13 Mar 2011, at 00:16, Adam Green wrote: Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan), so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference. I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account? Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app? Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets? If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple. Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Duane Roelands duane.roela...@gmail.com wrote: Wow. Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now get lost. This is appalling. -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Adam Green Twitter API Consultant and Trainer http://140dev.com @140dev -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Highly doubtful that they would do that and they certainly haven't now. Sent from my iPhone On 13 Mar 2011, at 01:00, Ellsass cpa...@gmail.com wrote: Scott, I don't think it's ludicrous to think that Twitter may eventually pull the plug on, say, statuses/home_timeline, effectively eliminating clients. If Twitter's concern is ad revenue, all they'd need to do is add a clause to their TOS specifying that all third-party clients must show in-line ads or the quickbar or whatever else Twitter uses to generate revenue. Then the issue is very clear for developers -- either integrate Twitter's revenue-producing content into your client, or don't make a client at all. The fact that they seem to be going about this a different way, and being a bit unclear as to what might happen to a client-only app, leaves open the possibility that they simply want to close down the market so the only access to one's timeline is via a first-party app. Scott Wilcox wrote: Hello, For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown. Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term. I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users. The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered. Scott. On 13 Mar 2011, at 00:16, Adam Green wrote: Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan), so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference. I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account? Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app? Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets? If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple. Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Duane Roelands duane.roela...@gmail.com wrote: Wow. Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now get lost. This is appalling. -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Adam Green Twitter API Consultant and Trainer http://140dev.com @140dev -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group:
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
They should insert ads into the stream, and say we can't remove them. That would be great. I have no problem with that, providing they treat us with respect. Give us an appeal process with warning if they don't like what we build. I have no problem with them wanting to make money from things I build. I want to make money from things they give me. I want everyone to make money. Developers are not the problem. They are the solution. I can't help thinking there are people at high levels who sit around saying How do we shake off these damned parasites? If I'm wrong, maybe we can see a message from management that says Here is a new initiative or dev program that will help you make money with the API. We love what you guys do so much we want to reward you. We want you to be part of a partnership. That would be refreshing. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Ellsass cpa...@gmail.com wrote: Scott, I don't think it's ludicrous to think that Twitter may eventually pull the plug on, say, statuses/home_timeline, effectively eliminating clients. If Twitter's concern is ad revenue, all they'd need to do is add a clause to their TOS specifying that all third-party clients must show in-line ads or the quickbar or whatever else Twitter uses to generate revenue. Then the issue is very clear for developers -- either integrate Twitter's revenue-producing content into your client, or don't make a client at all. The fact that they seem to be going about this a different way, and being a bit unclear as to what might happen to a client-only app, leaves open the possibility that they simply want to close down the market so the only access to one's timeline is via a first-party app. Scott Wilcox wrote: Hello, For a few days now I've read what people have said in reply to the update from Ryan. There are some crazy reactions and responses to what Ryan has said. In essence, the entire reaction is my opinion is completely overblown. Not in any sense what-so-ever have Twitter said that you can no longer post updates on behalf of users. Its ludicrous to suggest so. What they have have said (and in my opinion - quite clearly) is that it is better to direct your time and effort into a product that is not just a simple client and does more than just provide viewing and posting of tweets. There are so many half-arsed clients out there that do little more than just show and post tweets. If by chance a user was to use these low grade applications as their first experience of Twitter, it would probably put them off using it in the long term. I do fully believe that is why they have released their own branded clients for iOS, Macs and other devices. It provides a consistent experience for the end-users. The other thing that people seem to completely overlook is that Twitter are providing a freely accessible API at no charge to developers. It pains me to see so many developers standing the moral high ground. If you were paying for access to a service or product and it changes, you have a very valid reason to complain. To complain about a service provided free of charge for you to use at the end of the day frustrates me to no end. No single developer has a god given right to have access to the API, perhaps that should be remembered. Scott. On 13 Mar 2011, at 00:16, Adam Green wrote: Interesting that neither Ryan or anyone else from Twitter has replied once to any of the questions here, (way to go on showing your interest in the developer community, Ryan), so I'll address this question to everyone else in the group. I don't read Ryan's message as demanding that apps are no longer allowed to send tweets on behalf of users. Is that supposed to be what he said? I think he is saying that apps should be more than *just* clients that let you read and post tweets. How to tell the difference, I have no idea, but I think in Ryan's mind there is a difference. I'll ask it as clearly as I can. Is it still allowed for an app to accept a tweet from a user and post it into their account? Is the /statuses/update api call still allowed in an app? Let's not wait for Twitter to respond, since they clearly don't want to any longer. Let's try and figure this out ourselves. What does everyone think? Can apps still send tweets? If yes, there is still a market for Twitter API developers. If not, the Twitter API is over. It is that simple. Maybe Ryan or anyone from Twitter can also find the time to answer this. On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Duane Roelands duane.roela...@gmail.com wrote: Wow. Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now get lost. This is appalling. -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
why would you need a brand new verb? what's wrong with reply? On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Umashankar Das umashankar...@gmail.comwrote: Dear Ryan, A very direct question. Is it being said that I cannot associate a brand new field like 'Discuss' with a tweet in my website? Regards Umashankar Das On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 1:48 AM, Ryan Sarver rsar...@twitter.com wrote: Hey all, I’d like to give you an update about the state of the Twitter Platform and hopefully provide some much requested guidance. Since this time last year, Twitter use has skyrocketed. We’ve grown from 48 million to 140 million tweets a day and we’re registering new accounts at an all-time record. This massive base of users, publishers, and businesses is a giant playground for developers to build their own businesses on, and this means the opportunity has grown for everyone. With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever. As we talked about last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our own official iPhone app. It is the reason why we have developed official apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps. Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter. Similarly, a number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even more. Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter. *A Consistent User Experience* Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network’s conversations. We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere. Specifically: - *The mainstream consumer client experience*. Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets. If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience. In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy. This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user experience to third parties. Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order to protect the user experience on our platform. - *Display of tweets in 3rd-party services*. We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are. For example, some developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a tweet. With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms. *The Opportunity for Developers* Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no. If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but 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. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained. As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way. This is already happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking. According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis. In contrast, the number of successful
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
It has got to do with the nature of the way content is used. We will also have 'reply' to respond to the user. But, 'Discuss' is there to allow discussion on a certain topic. Imagine the context of the earthquake in Japan. Some user wants to know about facilities being provided by relief agencies in Tokyo. The discussion will be useful for a group of people who reference a particular tweet. Regards Umashankar Das On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 9:51 AM, Raffi Krikorian ra...@twitter.com wrote: why would you need a brand new verb? what's wrong with reply? On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Umashankar Das umashankar...@gmail.comwrote: Dear Ryan, A very direct question. Is it being said that I cannot associate a brand new field like 'Discuss' with a tweet in my website? Regards Umashankar Das On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 1:48 AM, Ryan Sarver rsar...@twitter.com wrote: Hey all, I’d like to give you an update about the state of the Twitter Platform and hopefully provide some much requested guidance. Since this time last year, Twitter use has skyrocketed. We’ve grown from 48 million to 140 million tweets a day and we’re registering new accounts at an all-time record. This massive base of users, publishers, and businesses is a giant playground for developers to build their own businesses on, and this means the opportunity has grown for everyone. With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever. As we talked about last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our own official iPhone app. It is the reason why we have developed official apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps. Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter. Similarly, a number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even more. Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter. *A Consistent User Experience* Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network’s conversations. We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere. Specifically: - *The mainstream consumer client experience*. Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets. If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience. In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy. This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user experience to third parties. Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order to protect the user experience on our platform. - *Display of tweets in 3rd-party services*. We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are. For example, some developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a tweet. With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms. *The Opportunity for Developers* Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no. If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but 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. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on
[twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Hey all, I’d like to give you an update about the state of the Twitter Platform and hopefully provide some much requested guidance. Since this time last year, Twitter use has skyrocketed. We’ve grown from 48 million to 140 million tweets a day and we’re registering new accounts at an all-time record. This massive base of users, publishers, and businesses is a giant playground for developers to build their own businesses on, and this means the opportunity has grown for everyone. With more people joining Twitter and accessing the service in multiple ways, a consistent user experience is more crucial than ever. As we talked about last April, this was our motivation for buying Tweetie and developing our own official iPhone app. It is the reason why we have developed official apps for the Mac, iPad, Android and Windows Phone, and worked with RIM on their Twitter for Blackberry app. As a result, the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps. Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn’t follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter. Similarly, a number of third-party consumer clients use their own versions of suggested users, trends, and other data streams, confusing users in our network even more. Users should be able to view, retweet, and reply to @nytimes’ tweets the same way; see the same profile information about @whitehouse; and be able to join in the discussion around the same trending topics as everyone else across Twitter. *A Consistent User Experience* Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network’s conversations. We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere. Specifically: - *The mainstream consumer client experience*. Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets. If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience. In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy. This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user experience to third parties. Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order to protect the user experience on our platform. - *Display of tweets in 3rd-party services*. We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are. For example, some developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a tweet. With this in mind, we’ve updated our Terms of Service: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms. *The Opportunity for Developers* Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no. If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but 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. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained. As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way. This is already happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking. According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis. In contrast, the number of successful applications and companies in the Twitter ecosystem that focus on areas outside of the mainstream consumer client experience has grown quickly, and this is a trend we want to continue to support and help grow. Twitter will always be a platform on which a smart developer with a great idea and some cool technology can build a great company of his or her own. And, with record user growth, there has never been a better time to build into Twitter. Some
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:18:24 -0700, Ryan Sarver rsar...@twitter.com wrote: THE OPPORTUNITY FOR DEVELOPERS Some key areas where ecosystem developers are thriving: - PUBLISHER TOOLS. Companies such as SocialFlow [2] help publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time. - CURATION. Mass Relevance [3] and Sulia [4] provide services for large media brands to select, display, and stream the most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or event. - REALTIME DATA SIGNALS. Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of enhancing their own core products. Klout [5] is an example of a company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to generate reputation scores for individuals. Similarly, Gnip [6] syndicates Twitter data for licensing by third parties who want to use our real-time corpus for numerous applications (everything from hedge funds to ranking scores). - SOCIAL CRM, ENTREPRISE CLIENTS, AND BRAND INSIGHTS. Companies such as HootSuite [7], CoTweet [8], Radian6 [9], Seesmic [10], and Crimson Hexagon [11] help brands, enterprises, and media companies tap into the zeitgeist about their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers using Twitter as a medium for interaction. - VALUE-ADDED CONTENT AND VERTICAL EXPERIENCES. Emerging services like Formspring [12], Foursquare [13], Instagram [14], and Quora [15] have built into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to their followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user acquisition, and traffic. There's a common thread in most of the businesses you've listed as thriving above. Nearly all of them interface with *multiple* networks - Twitter, yes, but also Facebook, LinkedIn, and even MySpace. HootSuite, for example, connects to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ping.fm, WordPress, Foursquare and mixi. There's also Google Buzz / Latitude, Tumblr, Posterous, Gowalla, Yelp, and I'm sure many others. In short, I'd say there seem to be few businesses thriving that have focused only on Twitter. Last time I looked at the Alexa site rankings world-wide, Twitter was number nine. It's a long climb to the top IMHO - Twitter needs to pass Wikipedia and Baidu just to get to the point where Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Facebook are in sight. Twitter is still growing, for sure, but there are clearly some challenges for developers who only develop for Twitter. -- http://twitter.com/znmeb http://borasky-research.net A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. -- Paul Erdős -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
Re: [twitter-dev] consistency and ecosystem opportunities
Would it be possible to get a set of user interface guidelines, like those that Apple provides to application developers, so that value add applications (such as TweePLayer.com) can conform consistently to the mainstream experience? Mike Caprio Principal and Lead Consultant Brainewave Consulting 402 Graham Avenue PMB 211 Brooklyn, NY 11211 p: +1-347-269-0558 @brainewave -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
