Twitter launching photo service | Hacker News Reader

Twitter launching photo service

techcrunch.com

59 pointsjimisir25 comments

This would have been a savvy move from Twitter about say, 4 years ago when it was clear people were going to be sharing a lot of images.

As regards developers, their message is to not build "client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience". However, the mainstream Twitter client experience may at any time be expanded to include whatever you're doing already. That's always a danger when building on someone else's API like this, but the 'inflection point' comes when a company actually starts replacing 3rd party developers' tools with official products.

That should help developers decide what to do next... In my case, it's more clear that I don't want to have anything to do with the Twitter API.

Sounds about right. Twitter seems happy to be one of the best ways to add a social component to otherwise standalone applications, but doesn't seem to care at all about facilitating applications that do nothing but "enhance" Twitter itself.

Building applications that are nothing but Twitter enhancements is probably not a good bet; at least, not if it's your only bet.

4 years ago weren't they still struggling with the sheer amount of tweets that were being sent? Adding images into the mix wouldn't have helped much, and may have killed off any momentum they had going?

Saying that, it would have been nice if they'd got there sooner.

I hope they do. For normal people, photo sharing is probably more important than link sharing. And, with photo sharing delegated to random third parties, Twitter users are left at the mercy of companies like Twitpic who will license their photos to agencies.

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but Twitter's direction in the past year has been anything but elegant.

Many of these features should have been done a long time ago, instead of letting an eco system grow as deeply as it did, knowing full well that any opportunity to monetize the platform would involve cannibalizing developers and creating resentment.

Having said all that, I'm looking forward to these changes as it will definitely create a more cohesive user experience.

Twitter has made their nut as the collective tissue of the social web. Sure the tweets are actual content, but they're always about something external -- twitter is most often used for seeing what people have to say and share about something else. If they move into photos that's a move into primary content, it means they're no longer just dealing with hosting the connective tissue - photos, videos, blogs are the meat. I dont have any conclusion to draw from there, because im conflicted. Philosophically that really bugs me, but practically I'll probably use it.

Look at it this way; they are thrashing and see photos as a natural extension of the tweet format as the photos are singular pieces of content, but they are far far larger than a tweet.

If there is anything we know from twitters past; uptime will be minimal with a bandwidth intensive service such as this.

Do they run their own CDNs now? Otherwise why would they have major issues hosting images? Scaling Twitter timelines was a way different problem.

In theory this is an ideal move for a company like Twitter. They are more and more going the route of Media company.

However what is not cool is the way in which these directions have been taken and the path chosen over the past year or so.

So yes great move for Twitter, the ecosystem and millions of users but somewhere this is getting ugly for companies that were solving this purpose for over 4 years when Twitter did not feel it necessary to do so for "users".

After the uncertainty and FUD TwitPic created in the minds of a lot of people, I think this decision is going to receive a lot less backlash than it originally would.

Personally, though, I still don't like how they are pushing out third-party developers, but I see some understandable motives for the decision.

  warning the ecosystem to stay away from building “client apps that mimic
  or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.”

That might be what they're saying, but what I'm hearing is stay away from any Twitter integration.

this is pretty interesting. I wonder what would happen to the twitpics and yfrogs of the world...

Easy, their sole acquisition target would disappear overnight...as will most of the value they provide today.

haha, yeah i think so too. But they might add some features maybe integrate with instagram (if they dont have that already--I dunno) that might still give em an advantage...

Not sure what type of feature they could add to integrate with instagram. For lack of a better word, they were a parasite on Twitter. Whatever Twitter implements will be better and more seamless than Twitpic.

Same goes for instagram, I think.

I don't think Twitpic will or can foster a community which means they'll always have to leach off someone else's. That's a tough battle to win.

Deleted comment

It seems clear that they are tacking away from "the product is the API" and to "the product is the whole user experience" (I'm far from the first to observe this).

What's not clear is why that would be their downfall.

On the contrary, it could be their easiest route to profitability. Create an API anyone can use, let anybody build products on it, and cherry-pick the most profitable verticals by acquisition. It's a win for twitter, and for the developers of at least one product in every vertical -- or even more than one, as Tweetie and Tweetdeck show.

Given Twitter's valuation, it's hard to back out Twitter client profits to numbers that make a dent.

On the other hand, it is clear that Tweetie (for Mobile) and Tweetdeck (for Desktops) give Twitter far more control over the user experience. Twitter can now (for instance) choose the default photo sharing service used by iOS, PC, and Mac, without convincing third parties to make changes.

I think it's easier to accept the idea that the client acquisitions are about user experience than it is to accept the idea that Twitter is going to realize return on investment by continuously acquiring businesses with (at best) low 8 figures revenue.

couldnt agree more. It kinda reminds me about open source and how the power of many is greater than one. With their restriction of what can be developed with their api, i havn't seen it as a forward moving action. 3rd party developers can make or break your product. It's always nice to keep them happy and would definitely explode your business

Besides link shortening and photo sharing, what are examples of third-party Twitter applications that the "bottom" 80% of Twitter users have widely adopted?

i'm not necessarily talking about any specific apps per se. My understanding of their rule is that you cannot create third party apps that mimic the twitter user experience. Now this experience is going to involve photo-sharing which developers might have spent a long time creating but now might not be able to continue work on it.

I'm also concerned about what other features they might create that might infringe upon what a developer thought at the time was not a direct user experience on twitter...

In the end, I'm more interested in seeing how it all plays out. I like twitter and I'm pretty sure developers will continue to find innovative ways of using their rich data

There is no rule that you can't create apps that "mimic the Twitter user experience". You have them confused with Apple. What there is is advice from Twitter that such apps are not a good bet, because Twitter is aggressively promoting their own apps and has no compunction about making changes that advantage their apps and disadvantage third party apps.

What other features might they create? Who knows? They're clearly going to bake in anything that makes sense for Twitter-the-business. That's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think you're right that Twitter is particularly dependent on third-party apps. I think we talk in a geek echo chamber that is particularly enthralled with apps, and with the best possible Twitter clients, but that most of Twitter's users --- and, in particular, Twitter's most lucrative users --- could give a flying whale about them. But they do need to share links and photos.

haha, i like the analogy with the whale.

But I don't think twitter is dependent on third party apps. I just feel that as an organization you can't necessarily think about and implement every single permutation of features that can be created with your data. Obviously it's your data and you reserve the right to release or not release it as you please.

Thanks for pointing out my erroneous assumption though. I just thought that if there are restrictions to what you can create and twitter obviously would keep adding new features to the product, it's not enough incentive for you as a developer to create twitter clients. But like you clearly pointed out, their most lucrative users might not really care about them. We agree to disagree

How are they going to monetize this? I'd love to see them buy http://pikchur.com (disclaimer: founders are very good friends of mine)

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