Twitter’s new rules
GOT A SMARTPHONE? NEED MORE IHNATKO?
Twitter has become such an important part of my day that the service seems like a component of the atmosphere. I feel as though Twitter, like oxygen and nitrogen, are just part of the package you’re entitled to when you agree to be born on Planet Earth.
But that’s not true, is it? It’s so easy to overlook the fact that my access to Twitter as I know it continues solely at the pleasure of the company that runs the service.
And that’s why a somewhat technical new post on Twitter’s official blog last week is so significant. Twitter is amending the rules that developers must adhere to when writing apps or services that incorporate Twitter.
Twitter became the powerhouse that it is today because of its almost total lack of restrictions. Developers were free to write any sort of Twitter client they imagined.
They were so, successful at this that their mobile and desktop apps completely trounced Twitter’s in-house offerings. They also could invent ways of using Twitter as an invisible channel for data, rather than as a destination in and of itself. This wide-open freedom to re-articulate the Twitter concept begat superstar apps such as Flipboard, which collects links to Tweeted articles and photos and videos in your subscriptions and lays them out in the form of a slick electronic magazine.
Well. Twitter is enforcing new rules. Some of them are universally positive. Others underscore the fact that the prime directive of every company is self-interest — if it wishes to keep making its payroll.
The initial wide-open approach to third-party Twitter software caused the company to lose a lot of its control over the direction of its own product. If Twitter’s ads are keeping the lights on and the break-room fridge stocked with discount diet colas, then an app that marginalizes those ads is a problem. So is an app that reduces Twitter to an invisible, underlying technology, and the kind of app that encourages a user to never interact with
directly. Overall, these changes enforce a thirdparty app ecosystem that can supplement Twitter but can’t really supplant it, and no app can ever tighten the taps of Twitter’s ad revenue.
None of this spells doom for Twitter. But it’s a warning. We should never forget that some of the services Do you have a bar code reader app? If so, snap a picture of the QRcode to the right and you’ll automatically be routed to Andy’s page at suntimes. com for an extended version of this column and more. we rely on every day are indeed proprietary products. The makers of those products are free to modify, limit or even remove our favorite features at any time, for any reason, without any notice.
We think of Twitter and Facebook as if they’re public roads. They aren’t. They’re footpaths through private property. The fact that your older brother and even your father used to take this same shortcut home from school every day doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use it tomorrow or continue to use it under the existing terms.