Twitter has now displayed a distinctive predatorial stance towards the developer ecosystem.
The ecosystem is encouraged to innovate, to expend time, effort, and money to come up with new ideas and build services. When that particular space proves to be successful and potentially rewarding, the predator pounces and screws everyone but the one picked as the winner. In the long term, the acquisition of Tweetie was a penny-wise pound- foolish move, and here's why: 1) From now on, everyone will know, or at least wonder, whether encouragement and support for the ecosystem is genuine, or simply a facade to cultivate the next space that Twitter can plunder. 2) Innovation is stifled, because to many it now is not worth their effort, time, and money to develop services that stand a very good chance of receiving a similar kick in the teeth. 3) In one single day, in one fell swoop, many developers have been turned away from Twitter. Few people have the level of imagination required to build new mouse traps, and fewer have the resources to build sophisticated new mouse traps. You will never hear from these developers who have been turned away. You will never know who they are and how many there were. They've just disappeared in the mist. You don't do this. You don't ride to success on the coattails and efforts of others and then turn around and plunder them. It is wrong. Twitter is not the first to do this, but it still does not make it right. -- To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
