Why isn’t Twitter charging for their API? | Hacker News Reader

Why isn’t Twitter charging for their API?

dustyreagan.com

52 pointsdustyreagan26 comments

They do, and the price is $0.0001 per tweet.

Search rate limits through the normal API can be prohibitive for many use cases like news/brand monitoring. Or even citizen monitoring programs for local police. So they resort to datasift and gnip and are charged volume-based amounts on behalf of Twitter. And presumably, at the end of every month, a wire transfer goes out to Twitter.

Now that doesn't mean that twitter makes $1 per 10,000 tweets. A license to the tweet is required separately for each end user of those two platforms. So with 1000 datasift users accessing a particular tweet, Twitter is making $0.10 on it. The more people request that tweet the more money Twitter makes. Marginal cost = 0.

For more info, check out the Datasift FAQ's: http://dev.datasift.com/docs/getting-started/billingfaq#lice...

It's because they want to build an advertising business and they don't want to compete with their developers. Twitter as a service is not the business they're in. They want direct access to their audience to increase their chances at monetization.

It makes perfect business sense, it just sucks.

Why don't they just block all 3rd party apps that emulate the official Twitter app experience?

I think they are strategically working towards that end. If they simply turned them off they'd be alienating Twitter users who use those apps and it would lead to lots of bad press.

Instead they're stunting their growth and signaling the beginning of the end.

Not cutting off third party apps right away also buys them time so they can improve the iOS and Mac apps (where I think the majority of third-party usage is), but I agree that the bad press is a larger deterrent than crappy first-party apps.

Its happening. The writing has been on the wall since OAuth became the only means of authentication.

They'll still be small/niche apps to count how many times your friends mention their cats in a given day, but anything remotely resembling a client will not be allowed.

There are a lot of famous people who use 3rd party apps to manage their social media stuff.

That does actually make sense. I think it's folly, but I guess I'm biased.

Because they ran the numbers. It wouldn't justify the valuation their investors demand, and it would be a distraction. Ads are their only hope. Draw your own conclusions.

Why can't they do both? I have a hard time believing giving the API away for free somehow costs less to manage than charging for it.

Have you ever worked at a company with xxxx employees? They would have to create a new product, perhaps a new business unit. The best developers may want to work on the API biz, even though it may make 1/50th of what ads make.

If you're a b2b customer paying $$ or $$$$, you would expect an SLA, customer support, etc. (think AWS). All that is expensive, and if the revenue would not be in the ballpark of ads then Twitter won't do it now. They need to find their cash cow before they can explore smaller markets.

Serious question: do people still have any remote desire to give the people behind Twitter money, after all they have pulled and shown themselves to be?

Nope, as a developer I can say that I wouldn't pay Twitter for access.

I probably also wouldn't take any paying jobs any more working with the free Twitter API as it stands now - too many restrictions.

Unless it's a per/something charge the numbers wouldn't be significant. I would guess there's less than a thousand serious API developers.

Well, I think the primary needle to move would be the max rate limit, with plan overages costing more.

I've heard numbers along the lines of millions of Twitter apps. From last year: http://mashable.com/2011/07/11/twitter-1-million-application... Who knows the percentage of serious apps. Twitter probably. Still, I'd imagine even would-be serious apps would pay for minimal Twitter API access.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those applications ended up being "test" applications. I know each developer at my last job had at least one test app of their own, with many of us using at least 4-5 test apps.

addendum: This was for 2 actual production applications.

Or, why don't they just interleave ads into the streams and require developers to either display those ads or pay a CPM equivalent to hide them? It seems clear their main concern is around the home_timeline feed anyways, so weaving in their 'sponsored tweets' and requiring developers display them seems straight forward enough.

I would assume that its in the works, but they already slapped developers in the face yesterday with new restrictions, if they added pricing plans on top of that, that would be inhumane and too much for developers to handle in on gulp.

Additionally with the pricing, its hard to get right. They won't be able to modify prices as they see fit after they announce them. So it seems like a logical progression: 1 restrict amount of data. 2 next, determine pricing

Personally, I think I'd find pricing tiers as a relief. It might be a hard pill to swallow at first, but in the long run it aligns third party API developers and Twitter's interests. Twitter would have a reason to provide quality support to developers, and in turn developers would have a stronger sense of security in developing using the Twitter API, since they're paying for it.

Pricing is hard to get right. But they have years of data, a billion dollars, and 140 employees. I think they have the resources to give it a good first estimate.

I don't think charging for API access will make them as much money as they want/need compared to being a media/ad company, that's probably the main reason. But, you're question did prompt me to ask my own:

Why doesn't Twitter rev-share their ads with 3rd party devs? http://gist.io/3383601

There was talk about this happening years ago: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_api_to_get_ads_...

I guess nothing ever came of it. :/

Not quite the same point - but similar thoughts: http://bit.ly/N9HnAD. What's really missing is a proper service contract. Not giving guarantees - or at best implicit ones will kill ecosystems.

[ FWIW you don't need to use a url shortner here, and it's actually preferred that you don't. If you're worried that folks will say "Gee he's just clicking to his own service" and down vote your comment, if they click through and see that you did that, and they are so inclined, they will do that anyway. ]

I don't know if I agree with your suggestion that the reason Twitter doesn't charge for their API is that they don't have a proper service contract (or by implication an API infrastructure). Some services make little sense until they are 'large' and getting 'large' is hindered by cost.

What Twitter doesn't have is a 'freemium' model of API access, but I don't doubt they will get there eventually.

Because it wouldn't bring in as much revenue as advertising, I'm guessing. And I think they'd rather have less third-party client than they do now.

Imagine developing a twitter app for iOS. Talk about a shitty job having to deal with shit from both Twitter and Apple.

Why? Who is in charge at Twitter?

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