When will Twitter answer: 1) Why did Twitter acquire Tweetie? 2) What is Twitter planning to do with Tweetie?
On Apr 12, 10:22 am, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote: > I wanted to email everyone and share my thoughts on the acquisition > from Friday, the communication around it and where we are going from > here. We're incredibly excited about Chirp, and I think an open > dialogue going into it is important. I look forward to meeting many of > you there and continuing the discussion. > > We love the Twitter ecosystem and work hard every day to help support > you and make the platform you are building on as successful as it can > be for everyone involved. We love the variety that developers have > built around the Twitter experience and it's a big part of the success > we've seen. However when we dug in a little bit we realized that it > was causing massive confusion among user's who had an iPhone and were > looking to use Twitter for the first time. They would head to the App > Store, search for Twitter and would see results that included a lot of > apps that had nothing to do with Twitter and a few that did, but a new > user wouldn't find what they were looking for and give up. That is a > lost user for all of us. This means that we were missing out an > opportunity to grow the userbase which is beneficial for the health of > the entire ecosystem. Focus on growing and serving the userbase is > beneficial to everyone in the ecosystem and more opportunities become > available with a larger audience. We believe strongly that the > ecosystem is critical to our success and this move doesn't change > that. We have analytics that show our most engaged users are ones that > use SMS, twitter.com AND a 3rd-party application. It further proves > that there are different audiences and needs that we can never meet on > our own and we all need to work together to provide what is best for > the users. Once I understood the long-term view I strongly believed it > was not only the right thing to do for users, but the right thing to > do for the ecosystem as a whole. > > To be clear, we are going to work hard to improve our product, add new > functionality, make acquisitions when it's in the best interest of > users and the whole ecosystem at large. Each one of those things has > the potential to upset a company or developer that may have been > building in that space and they then have to look for new ways to > create value for users. My promise is that we will be consistent in > always focusing on what's best for the user and the ecosystem as a > whole and we will be sincere and honest in our communication with you. > To the point that we can, we will try to give more certainty about the > areas where we think we can maximize benefit to users. We will > continue to focus on what is best for users and we will work together > to make sure that we are creating more opportunities for the ecosystem > on the whole. We will also admit our mistakes when they are made and > the Blackberry client should never have been labeled "official". It > has since been changed and you won't see that language used with > Twitter clients in the future. > > This week will hopefully show that we are focused on building a > platform that no longer just mirrors twitter.com functionality, but > offers you raw utility that provides much greater opportunities to > innovate and build durable, valuable businesses. I also want this week > to be an opportunity for us to get together and discuss the future of > the platform and how we can improve our communication, responsiveness > and clarity. We have an open office hours at 10:15am on Thursday at > the Hack Day and I invite all of you to come by for a discussion to > talk about the future of the platform and help us craft a working > relationship that is beneficial for both of us. I will provide a free > ticket to anyone from this list that is unable to afford the current > price so that they can be part of that discussion. Just email me > directly. For those of you who can't make it to Chirp, it will be live > streamed so you can tune in from home -- where ever home might be. > > As always, you can reach me by email or by phone, 617 763 9904. I am > here to listen and provide clarity when possible and you should know > we are committed to working with you on this. > > Best, Ryan -- To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
