> Well, I'm old enough but I was doing something radically different from > Ashton-Tate at the time. This whole thread is starting to sound eerily > similar to last year, when Fred Wilson made the infamous "filling holes" > blog post, followed by Twitter buying Tweetie, followed by Chirp. I'd be > surprised if the *Twitter* ecosystem could support 10,000 independent > developers - they'd self-organize into businesses with some sort of power > law size distribution, where the largest such business is Twitter itself. > > I don't know that Twitter "wants to be embedded into the infrastructure of > corporations." It seems to me that Twitter is unique and not at all suited > to intra-enterprise communications. Besides, there are dozens of enterprise > software platforms that can do everything Twitter can do except talk to the > hundreds of millions of Twitter users in real-time. ;-) > > Maybe I am thinking too small, but then again, people aren't coming to *me* > with problems big enough to require whitelisting, or for that matter > Cassandra, or MapReduce, or sending thousands of DMs a day. Even if they > did, there's no way I could compete with Twitter. I really should save this > for my blog - it's been a while since I wrote a post about Twitter, and > that's what my search analytics tell me people read there. ;-) > Good points. I think the basic confusion is the definition of developer. It could mean someone who builds a web or mobile app and tries to monetize it. That would be limited. I think it also means all the consultants and in-house programmers who integrate Twitter into existing websites and businesses. As I started responding CNN ran a big button on the screen telling people to try their Twitter integration on their website. I think that was built by a developer, not Twitter HQ. Multiply that by every TV show, radio program, newspaper, magazine, movie, real estate office, hospital, retailer, you get the point. There are way more than 10,000 programmers who work on websites and mobile apps around the world. They are all possible Twitter developers, among other tasks they did. Too big an idea? Maybe, but with the right assistance from Twitter, there would be enough developers that when a competitor comes along Twitter would have a base that would make it hard to switch. That is what we offer them.
I have an idea. Why doesn't Twitter hire a developer relations person? Not a support person. Matt and Taylor do a good job of technical support. I appreciate what they do. I mean someone who could run a developer program. I haven't seen someone like that yet. Could some of the $200 million pay that salary? I look forward to your blog post on this, Edward. -- 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
