Not completely unexpected. Twitter needs cash, and they need a sustainable business model. I would not be surprised if Tumblr and Twitter talked and there was a value disagreement about who brought what to the party. Another one of those things my grandfather would say that this reminds me of is this, "The thing about a Mexican standoff is that sometimes they shoot."<p>I used to do Battlebots, Comedy Central had the television rights, at contract renewal time Battlebots and CC disagreed over who brought the most value to the table, they agreed to disagree and both walked away.<p>Clearly this will kill neither Twitter nor Tumblr but what it does do is put an obvious to fill gap in Tumblr's toolchest. Presumably they could add Identi.ca there where Twitter was, sure you wouldn't find any friends their yet but if Tumblr can convince their users to get an Identi.ca id when they create their Tumblr and then offer a chance to find people with it, it helps more than it hurts.
I wonder if Twitter will become like MySpace -- a mass market/middle school/music/urban ghetto, with everyone smart enough to move to another service doing so (which was Facebook at the time).<p>If the tech/vc/science community moved to app.net, the only thing left for me on twitter would be businesses abusing it as a form of RSS, which is by far the easiest content for them to publish to both Twitter and App.net in parallel. So really there are about 5k and maybe up to 50k people who need to move to app.net for me to no longer care about Twitter, and presumably at least 2500 of them have already signed up.
Direct link to source: <a href="http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/08/22/tumblr-becomes-next-property-instagram-twitter-friend-finding-privileges-revoked/" rel="nofollow">http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/08/22/tumblr-becomes-next...</a><p>I wonder if they tried to negotiate behind the scenes, to get Tumblr to pay $$$ for that access, and couldn't come to an agreement. Or if this is part of a negotiating strategy. Charging for third-party access seems logical given that they referred to their follow graph's "great value" when they shut off Instagram. Simply shutting off access at any price, on the other hand, doesn't make sense.
This is getting to be ridiculous (if the story is true). This use case of finding friends wasn't part of the Forbidden Twitter Quadrant, the one containing clients and apps like Favstar. In fact, they encouraged this kind of use at their developer event I attended last year, and of course they would, it strengthens the value of their network. I have been planning this kind of integration myself, but it's beginning to feel like Twitter wants to become a completely isolated silo.<p>I can only hope a mistake was made here as it sounds so absurd.
These companies are competitors. There was a time when it was worth the user/developer goodwill to let other networks build their graph off of Twitter's. At this stage (and it's been this way for a while), Tumblr almost feels like a migration path away from Twitter since it allows for longer content. If users can replace platforms but not graphs, what is stopping them? Twitter recognizes this and wants to stem that. It might not be what we expect from a web or (former) API company, but I don't think it's personal. They're just transitioning away from being an API company.<p>It seems like to get popular you have to be open and then to make money you have to be closed.
Wow, this is yet another (dumb) bold move by Twitter. I'm very curious to see how this unfolds. I could see this triggering a lot of negative exposure to Twitter in the coming days/weeks, if this is how they are going to start silently cutting major developers off.
Without consensus about (1) which metrics are important to Twitter, and (2) how to maximise them, these comments about them being dicks are just emotional responses.<p>Nothing wrong with that: getting burned by Twitter as a developer or user is worth other people's attention, as we all try to understand what to make of it.
Twitter seems not respecting API neutrality (same paradigm as Internet neutrality), the fact that all API 3rd-party users may have the same rights, access and limits to your API, if they satisfy same primary conditions (free or paying users)<p>Instagram, Linkedin, Tumblr...who's next?<p>They have gone crazy since they want to have their "consistent user experience"...
They did the same thing with Instagram, I think Twitter are doing this because these competing websites are generating a lot of new users for those websites while leaving Twitter in the dark on growth, revenue, etc. Twitter sees this as significant competition, although I don't really see how blocking these "competitors" from using the Twitter API helps Twitter?
I have said it before and I will say it again... for some reason, twitter is taking themselves way too seriously with all of these recent developments. Anyone who competes indirectly is clearly not wanted. What a shame.
Following recent rumors that Apple would buy a chunk of Twitter, maybe Twitter begins to close itself to fit with Apple vision of closed but mainstream and consistent user experience.