I'm about a week away from launching a project that depends pretty heavily on the social graph and your connections in it.<p>I have both facebook and twitter authentication, and for each the app hits the relevant APIs to find your friends who are also using my app.<p>I've definitely focused more on twitter integration, as I view the twitter identity as more lightweight and less invasive- given the choice I would always sign up for services with twitter over facebook.<p>But at this point, I'm seriously considering ripping twitter auth out entirely given their actions the past couple weeks with turning off the find friends functionality on tumblr and instagram.<p>I realize it's a huge longshot my app gets to the size of a tumblr or instagram, but the whole thing is pretty much predicated on the apps ability to connect you with your friends.<p>So, HN, would you remove 'find friends through twitter' functionality from an app before launch, or would you go forth with it and wait for twitter to shut you down? Is it a real concern that I may lose this functionality? Or do you see that as a great problem to have, i.e. got enough traction that twitter noticed?
You are framing this as a matter of personal ethics, rather than a business decision, so it's difficult to answer your question. You feel that Twitter did Tumblr and Instagram wrong. I tend to think that taking sides between two giants is dumb - the giants won't notice, but you'll get hurt.<p>If I had already built the Twitter functionality in, I would not preemptively rip it out, I would wait for them to shut that functionality off. Then I would raise a huge stink about it, get the name of the service in the news and maybe capture some Internet good will.<p>If I hadn't built Twitter functionality, I wouldn't spend any resources on building it until after launch.