While , being philosophical about loss of whitelisting, the recent behaviour wsith regard to searches is not necessarily very postive for Twitter's public profile. Software history has shown that more than the individual product , it is the ecosystem, which determines the future of the product and the company.
The current debate on Nokia and it's viability has been a prime-example of that. It is well-known that Java became popular despite efforts by various forces to discourage it's widespread usage . Now, Twitter and it's API groups claim that, they, are putting artificial limits of rates to ensure proper delivery for regular service. Someone has not studied the history of path-breaking products up there. If the method here is to discourage developers to invest in twitter to create applications, it is not the best idea. There is a lot of talk in market ccts that Twitter is looking at different ways to monetise it's huge userbase. Somehow, the recent actions leads us to believe , that, with that kind of focus you guys are losing track of what twitter can actually become. Twitter is already a successful product. It was a great idea which has changed the way people communicate with each other. Today, revolutions happen in twitter. With all these restrictive views and thought processes, one believes that, perhaps, It does not think like a startup anymore. Guys, your role model should be facebook. Even today, they think like startups. It was facebook's open development platform which was the driver to more users in it's 2nd phase of expansion. We in our company view twitter as much larger than micro-blogging product. We believe it can symbolise the next WWW. Our product lines are designed on that. We dont have whitelisting and we were not planning to apply for it. We were willing to work around the different restrictions and come up with innovative solutions. These restrictions have increased resource requirements for the product we're building, but out here, we're happy about it. They've got us people who have innovation which is essential to a successful startup. Somehow, the recent statements make me believe that twitter is losing it here. I come from the domain of server technologies. I completely understand that QoS (Quality of service) is a big issue. But, in times of peak load, twitter still does go down. By putting artificial limits on querying twitter, you're not allowing creation of the next generation of products. All these limits indirectly makes one believe that twitter does not want more users. That seems very contradictory for a company whose valuation of 8-10 Billion USD is a function of it's userbase. If I were given the charge of solving this problem i would add new servers . Our server requirement[dedicated] costs us about 140 USD permonth/perserver. It has been said that you guys use Cassandra. Given Cassandra's performance replication efficencies are fairly decent. A fleet of 10 servers should be enough to handle things for you guys for the near future. That will be less than what you guys pay a developer. I'm sure lots of users will be happy to pay for this too. Although, the real trick is to be free. The future is about being open. Facebook was a means of bringing your social experience online. But, there was a concept of exclusivity to it. Twitter was diametrically opposite. It allowed people to talk to anybody. Politically speaking, it was a very democratic experience. I would like to see twitter bigger than Google someday. Blocking development platforms is not the way to go. Regards Umashankar Das On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Adam Green <[email protected]> wrote: > The behavior on this group has changed significantly since Ryan > finally admitted that Whitelisting no longer exists. I've never seen > anyone discuss methods of getting around TOS before, well there was > Edward H., and we saw what happened to him. Now there are free flowing > discussions of MTurk and other tricks to go way beyond the rate > limits. I think this is great. Frankly, Twitter has done a good job of > offering free resources to devs, which I thank them for, but there was > way too much fear before. Now there are no extra benefits that can be > given and withdrawn "on a case by case basis." Boy do I hate that > phrase. Of course, they can ban people from this list, but maybe the > irony of Twitter blocking free speech on their own forum may restrain > that urge in the future. > > Personally, I've treated Whitelisting like Social Security. It ain't > going to be there when I need it. That has turned out to be a winning > strategy. I don't really violate TOS, since I'm not as spammer, but I > have never tried building anything that would fail if Twitter didn't > give me Whitelisting "after it got into production", which BTW was the > most disrespectful thing I've seen from a platform vendor. Everyone > should assume that you need to use what is there by default, and > always be ready with a workaround if that gets taken away. My gut > tells me that things will get worse before they get better. Twitter HQ > will be under huge pressure to make money before the IPO, and we are > likely to get some of the cuts. The inevitable "they are parasites > leeching off of us" will surface. Anyone here old enough to remember > Ed Esber? But in the long run, I've never seen a global phenomenon > like Twitter, so I'm in it for the next 10 years at least. Then I can > retire. > > Let's keep the discussion open guys. They've already taken away the > most important thing you wanted. Now we can build with our eyes open. > And don't be afraid to speak up. This is Twitter. Revolutions happen > here. > > 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
