Internal messages at Twitter show cutting off 3rd party apps was intentional | Hacker News Reader

Internal messages at Twitter show cutting off 3rd party apps was intentional

daringfireball.net

59 pointsaaronbrethorst9 comments

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And to think that Elno stated just yesterday that "Transparency builds trust" [0].

He's not wrong.

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1613995936585519104

> And to think that Elno ...

I hope that typo was intentional and I hope it catches on. Elno would not like that one bit.

“Elno wants his birdsite without other apps joining!”

> raised the possibility that Twitter might have turned off access to the apps deliberately because they don’t help drive ad revenue

That would be a weird approach since you need users to see ads and users come mostly to follow the larger accounts which (most of them?) choose to use the 3rd party apps with better features rather than the official one. That's basically just annoying the creators that drive that traffic and may slow down, or stop.

I'm not sure if anyone can shed light on this, but I'm finding it really hard to put together any rhyme or reason for the moves Elon has been making at Twitter.

Many of the decisions seem to be on a whim (despite the public telling him they're bad ideas), and when the consequences of those decisions occur, he reverts those decisions - with an almost obliviousness to the warnings previously given to him ...

I'm curious to know if this is how he's run his previous businesses - and were they successful despite of this style of decision making (or maybe because of this style of decision making?)

Did Elon take a few notes at his meeting with Tim Cook?

Tim Cook's paycut re-allocated to Elon M new hires leadership team for finding corporate synergies with the New Next Apple, Starlink, Twitter is a good problem to have.

> Twitter might have turned off access to the apps deliberately because they don’t help drive ad revenue. At least some don’t show ads that appear on Twitter. That means the apps may be hurting Elon Musk’s ability to stop a major decline in ad revenue in the past two months.

I can only see the possibility that Twitter will start limiting and then charging access to the Twitter API to counter the cost of giving a free-for-all access for decades. Everyone should know that nothing is free forever.

As always, it now almost makes no sense to build your entire business solely on someone else's API. Third party apps and especially unofficial clients and apps always get a bad deal and access is at the sole discretion to the service that they are connecting to.

It's time to pay up to access the Twitter API.

No one is making money from Twitter.

Twitter isn't YouTube, Twitch, or Instagram, or TikTok. Influencers don't influence through Twitter. Twitter isn't even in the top 10 social media sites. Twitter's influence, measured objectively, is close to Tumblr, no where near the big dogs. Big enough to be part of a marketing thrust, but not the focus of that thrust like a Twitch streamer is focused on Twitch.

No one is going to build a brand on Twitter like a YouTuber, Twitch streamer, or TikToker.

Twitter on the other hand, took up a $13 Billion loan a few weeks ago (estimated to be $1.3 Billion in interest payments per year) and then promptly lost $2.5 Billion (out of $5 Billion) revenue from advertisers.

Twitter is obviously the party who needs to kowtow, and beg for people to stay. Twitter can't afford to piss off it's content makers like YouTube just did last week.

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