Dick Costolo recently spoke about Twitter as a platform on Charlie Rose show - "The future of Twitter is that we'll have a true platform, not just an API that allows developers to create an alternate Twitter experience, but an API that allows third parties to build on top of Twitter in a way that creates accretive value for the user, much how Amazon allowed third-party merchants to build into Amazon."<p>He made it abundantly clear that Twitter doesn't want its API to be used for alternative twitter clients. IFTTT does not necessarily create alternative twitter consumption client but it can be used to accomplish that.<p>On a side note (and it may not be popular with HN community); so far we have seen API used (majority of times) for alternative twitter consumption clients. May be with these API changes, we might see more innovation using Twitter as a "platform"? Rather than people trying to create alternative clients.
This feels very counter to Twitter's claimed intent in rolling out the new policies.<p>IFTTT is in no way trying compete as a Twitter client, and, especially in the case where I'm trying to archive <i>my own Tweets,</i> the service only enhances my Twitter experience.<p>Twitter's throwing a lot away in the name of squeezing more value out of its assets.
I've been using IFTTT to syndicate my Twitter posts to App.net. Guess now I'll have to default to App.net and syndicate to Twitter instead. Say goodbye to my ad revenue, Twitter.
Their investors obviously got tired of waiting for a return. When that happens at any VC-backed company they start ratcheting up the pressure on the CEO and executive team. And if they don't start generating a return quickly enough, they put their own guy in place. So co-founder Evan Williams moved on from his CEO position in late 2010 and the new leadership purged the old guard. Dick Costolo took over.<p>Either it took 2 years for his profit strategy to come together or the pressure started ratcheting up on him, too. After all, investors have sunk a silly amount of money into Twitter; they expect a return.<p>Either way, I wouldn't want to work at Twitter right now...
This is the full email from IFTTT
<a href="http://pastebin.com/uttmebvT" rel="nofollow">http://pastebin.com/uttmebvT</a><p>Very diplomatic. I wouldn't have minded a "this sucks for you & us" in there.
Twitter's handling of their API closes the door on a future where there can be any expectation of building your service on-top of another.<p>We should stop building apps on-top of walled custom APIs and go back to using HTTP as an API.
Are you kidding me?! Why would Twitter do this? Picture Twitter as a tree trunk of data. There are branches and leaves that grow off the trunk, branches like IFTTT and other amazing services. But once you cut off the leaves, then the branches, only the trunk is left. A dead, dead trunk. A couple months ago there wasn't an alternative to Twitter. Now there is. I'm switching to App.net tonight.
I started to think of Twitter in between SMS and E-mail as I think a lot of people did. To me Twitter is more of a protocol or even a modality than a platform. That's the brilliance of it: it's a speed and length of communication that feels very natural. I have no objections to these rules in terms of Twitter growing as a company. I think there are a lot of applications that can be built aside from clients and it makes sense for them to steer people in that direction.<p>As a user, however, I feel attached to the idea that data and application are separate. I would like to think that I own my Tweets, but most of all I just want to _feel_ like I own my tweets — like I can _do_ whatever I want with them and see them however I want. A short, passive message that I put out in to the world is a great thing and it seems unlikely that a single company can own that idea.
Just yesterday I saw someone saying how twitter's API policies didn't bother him: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4545823" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4545823</a>. Now they do.
IFTTT seems like a perfect case for something that should be an open source project that anyone can install and run on their own servers, not as a centralized service, specifically to prevent things like this. Then anyone could contribute recipes and API clients and there's no central point of failure for them to be all removed in one go.
People at Twitter must realize that when developers talk about your API's tos rather than the API, you must have broken something. It reminds me Facebook episode of network feed and privacy. At the end of it, Mark understood what the users were talking about and took action to correct it.<p>The problem seems like an issue of making profit by showing promotional tweets, which will not happen in the clients. It, to me, looks like the problem of management which could not come up with better revenue model.
Ok, I created the product <a href="http://2FB.me" rel="nofollow">http://2FB.me</a> (ReTweet 2 Facebook) months ago and I read the same policy some weeks ago and didn't read it to mean this at all. 2FB.me makes share links for tweets enhancing & augmenting the experience. It doesn't clone any portion of Twitter. I think the same can be said for IFTTT?
Well, according to Dick Costolo it has <i>nothing</i> to do with the API changes: <a href="https://twitter.com/dickc/status/248947914582405120" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/dickc/status/248947914582405120</a> but I'm struggling to imagine IFTTT killing a really useful feature for no reason.
Congrats to IFTTT for getting themselves a crap load of coverage dishonestly! Yay!<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/20/ifttt-has-actually-been-in-violation-of-twitters-api-for-months-todays-move-unrelated-to-1-1/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/20/ifttt-has-actually-been-in-...</a>
Add to the list for the need for a decentralized, distributed platform with no one party in control of our information and publishing. I, for one, am really looking forward to what the <a href="http://tent.io/" rel="nofollow">http://tent.io/</a> guys come out with.
I used this functionality to track updates on software from companies/groups that don't do RSS. They do/did Twitter. I also got downtime alerts from Pingdom via Twitter.<p>I'm starting to see this as less and less of a platform I can depend on.
I don't get it. IFTTT complies with the new API policies. Infact, cool stuff like IFTTT is exactly what twitter should be looking for as platform apps which use their API creatively.
It's Twitter's way or the highway. From clients to value-added services, if Twitter doesn't own it, it's dead or soon will be. Fun while it lasted, I guess.
I am disappointed that I cannot post tweets to Facebook with this any more. However, using twitterfeed to post them should be fairly straightforward . . .
What about Zapier? Doesn't it provide the same Twitter connectivity as IFTTT did? I don't use either, but, from casual inspection a while back, my impression was that they are similar enough in that regard.