Tapbots: Don't Panic | Hacker News Reader

Tapbots: Don't Panic

tapbots.com

75 pointsgoogletron18 comments

Agreed, Twitter requiring you to get in touch with them should your app grow past 100k users seems like they're just setting a public limit for the point at which they want to vet that your application is behaving correctly.

From my experience with the Twitter API team, they've always been open and responsive, particularly with regards to a "Hey, I would like to do X with your API, is that alright?"-type questions.

I think Twitter have taken a lot of unfair flack from this announcement, when it seems like a really positive step forwards.

Here's their response to the suggestion that they allow CORS:

https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/1291

Here's App.net's:

https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec/issues/10

Can you spot the difference? Hint, consider the nature of the relationship between the platform and developer in each case.

Can you spot the difference? Hint, consider the nature of the relationship between the platform and developer in each case.

Be fair, you're comparing apples and oranges; a world as it would be nice to live in when discussed amongst friends, as opposed to those who have to maintain a world with just a few more people involved in it than that.

Something tells me the support tickets with advertisers looks more like that App.net thread.

It seems to me that a lot of people weighing in on this situation (mainly elsewhere, not on HN) are not even developers, let alone Twitter developers. As such, they don't really have any valid contribution to the discussion and only serve to create incendiary comments and stir up controversy.

From the consumer's perspective, sure, this looks like a raw deal. Twitter wants to shut down my favorite client. Those assholes! But the reality of the situation is they simply want to control the client experience so they can insert ads.

Of course, this all breaks down as soon as one client lets you put in your own application keys...

TL;DR: one of your favorite twitter clients doesn't see most of this being a problem for a couple years --- and even then, they imagine there will possible routes for them to take when that time comes. Granted, they may be misunderstanding their relationship with twitter, but they really do sound optimistic.

It doesn't acknowledge the worry of newcomer developers to the twitter ecosystem, but I feel that we've been doing a good enough job of speaking to the doom and gloom here on HN. (Edit: See lukifer's comment. Excellent example of one of the difficulties that new apps will face)

They might be taking the view that when Twitter sees that their third party apps are showing the adverts Twitter is sending out, a lot of the pressure on the relationship will come off. It's not like this policy has to be static, in a year the policy could change completely.

And on the flip side, they have to stay positive and at keep motivation up if they're going to work on some other revenue streams which aren't dependent on Twitter.

We got completely different takeaways from this article. My takeaway tldr is: "don't stop buying our app just because the future is bleak". This statement struck me in particular:

> We’ll be working with Twitter over the next 6 months to make sure we comply with these new requirements as much as possible.

As much as possible? You have to comply 100%, I'm pretty sure Twitter won't be happy with you just making an effort. The new display requirements and the requirements not to include extended functionality nearly eliminate clients' ability to compete on anything other than just looks. Tweetbot features like Mute are going to have to go away.

I'm not doubting their commitment at all, by the way. I just read this article as a glass half-full perspective.

I'm impressed with their positivity but then they have effectively just been granted a monopoly.

...how have they been granted a monopoly?

"Monopoly" is too strong a word, but "advantage" is not quite strong enough. In short, new Twitter apps will have a cap of 100k user tokens, while Tweetbot gets 2x their current number of tokens (hypothetically, if they have 400k users now, they get 800k tokens). A new developer will never be able to get 800k tokens while the new rules stand.

Of course, there's nothing to stop Twitter from creating new new rules that kill Tweetbot or remove the advantage.

Is it really an advantage? I know Tweetbot is the cool kid among the Twitter clients nowadays but others have been around a lot longer and I would assume have many more users (even if those users aren't still using the client).

> A new developer will never be able to get 800k tokens while the new rules stand.

What makes you think that?

Twitter didn't set a hard limit of 100K tokens for all new apps. That's just the initial limit. You can request more, and I assume they would grant them to popular, legitimate apps.

It will be difficult however for "traditional" clients to get deals for more than 100k tokens.

Where was this stated?

> That upper-right quadrant also includes, of course, "traditional" Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Echofon. Nearly eighteen months ago, we gave developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience."And to reiterate what I wrote in my last post, that guidance continues to apply today.

https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api

That's just wrong. According to a test – admittedly somewhat unscientific, but good enough for our purposes – done by developer Benjamin Mayo and vetted by TNW, third-party apps only contribute to ~25% of twitter's activity. Tweetbot is in the upper echelons of that 25%, but it's not even in the top 10 overall.

I'm sure they do well, but they definitely don't have a monopoly.

Sources: http://benjaminmayo.co.uk/how-many-people-use-twitter-s-own-...

http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/07/23/only-an-estimated-2...

They're basically telling people not to worry, everyone should still buy their app, because they're not going to be shutting it down in the near future. This is done purely in order to sustain their sales, and likely incidentally to ease their relationship with Twitter as they help diffuse some of Twitter's bad PR pressure. Don't mistake this for an indication of a lack of panic at their offices.

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