Meerkat Founder on Getting the Kill Call from Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Meerkat Founder on Getting the Kill Call from Twitter

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75 pointscarlchenet47 comments

Twitter has form[0]:

    Twitter Cuts Off DataSift To
    Step Up Its Own Big Data Business

As I said elsewhere[1]:

    Never, ever trust another company
    for your business model.

I was accused on that occasion of spouting a "thought-terminating cliche" - the resulting discussion was interesting. But think what you like, as some else has said, working with Twitter is like collecting pennies in front of a steam-roller[2][3][4].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9363102

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9363274

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504016

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleb_distribution

[4] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=collecting+pennies+in+fron...

What value was there for DataSift to resell Twitter data and take a cut? What could possibly be in it for Twitter? In fact it's worse on two dimensions. First, financial (DataSift apparently gets an 80% cut). Second, DS gets the lock-in and "commoditizes" Twitter's offering, by putting it right beside a dozen other "sources". It's obvious that this deal was just just market evaluation or laziness on Twitter's part, or at best, wanting to keep a barrier between them and the data seller in case things went wrong. DataSift had a time-limited contract and it ran out. Their competitor (Gnip) apparently delivered a useful product by spending far less money.

(Of note is that FB's new sentiment analysis data product is being trialed via DataSift. This feels like a similar thing, with the added benefit that if it goes sour ("omg FB is literally selling our data/feelings"), they've got a slight degree of separation. Plus faster time to market etc. (Note that this didn't help DatSift's sudden loss of FB connectivity the other month, as FB dropped an API when they felt like it.)

On Meerkat, they were flagrantly disobeying the rules Twitter had set forth. They knew they were going to get in trouble, but "growth hacking". Related: Maybe my awesome search engine that just frontends Google isn't a great idea either.

That there's any sympathy or surprise here is confusing to me.

I strongly suspect that at the time they signed the deal (5 years ago), Twitter didn't have the technical capability to resell data (the site itself was going down lots!), so they had to do deal with DataSift and others.

DataSift previously ran TweetMeme, and did have good technical / scaling capabilities.

(I think I read that there was some other scaled technical thing DataSift did for Twitter too, but I can't remember what - so take this comment as a hint rather than facts)

"Never, ever trust another company for your business model."

Or, to quote the '90s, "Where does [Microsoft] want to take you today?"

I was thinking about Meerkat and DataSift last night when I read about the seemingly idiotic idea of "no-stack startups": http://blog.aweissman.com/2015/05/no-stack-startups.html. Might as well call them "no-moat startups".

Edit: already submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9500424

There's a solid number of companies out there that have been contractors for bigger companies for decades. Nobody wants to talk about them because half of the tech industry press is all about high growth trendy companies when there's a lot of silent tech businesses that churn out cash reliably and for probably pretty boring stuff.

Welcome to the new world of closed ecosystems. May be a wakeup call for others who think they can directly compete with those who actually pull the strings of the ecosystem.

When the TA from my university told us updates for the laboratory will be on facebook, I told him I want them on email. Everyone in the room looked at me like I was a dinosaur who doesn't have a facebook account.

TA was surprised too as well, until I asked rhetorically "why facebook? Why not Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Kik, DropBox etc?". The TA then understood my point and updates were sent on email.

Although Meerkat vs Periscope is not exactly the same thing, but its problems are from the same reasons, open vs closed ecosystem.

The problem is that everybody wants to be the "gate keeper", and become the regulator of their own market. But there can at most be a few of them for a particular market.

It is ironic that the "free market" eventually leads to such an outcome.

It is ironic that the "free market" eventually leads to such an outcome.

The best way to win in a free market is to stop the market from being free (form a monopoly, influence the governmrnt, etc) ... Surely every good capitalist knows that.

You're no longer winning in a free market if it isn't free.

This may be true, but as true is it also that when one has checkmated the opponent's king, one is no longer winning at chess. Instead, one has won at chess. And if play continues, the game is no longer chess. This would not mean though that one has not won at chess.

I would say it's more like physically hitting the opponents king off the board and claiming you've won at chess.

Relevant (dead) reply from vegedor:

  From the perspective of a monopolized, unregulated etc. market, it is free of
  competition, free from regulation, etc.
  off-topic: what's the preposition to use with free?

Actually not off-topic at all! Here's a quote from The Handmaid's Tale: "There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from."

These two kinds of freedom are the very two you're asking about. The free market is the ultimate "freedom to" - freedom to compete, freedom to sell at the prices you want, freedom to buy anything you can afford.

Proponents of regulated markets point out that there are important "freedom from"s not covered by a free market: freedom from inequality and injustice, freedom from rent-seeking and predatory pricing, freedom from unsafe products and environmental damage.

Of course, for many things the distinction is arbitrary. What is the "freedom to" compete but the "freedom from" monopolies? How is the "freedom from" unsafe products different from the "freedom to" buy products without being harmed?

As you point out, perhaps it's just a matter of perspective.

Sleight of hand and linguistic gymnastics.

Freedom from inequality comes from freedom to buy and sell goods and labor without* restrictions or borders, inequality is near all time highs because of crony capitalism and corrupt governments.

Edited for clarity

We call this reprehensible "Rent-Seeking", and it is one of the larger problems with modern laissez-faire capitalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Nah, it's one of the larger problems in any known economic system (including in the form of corruption).

I could see is being a problem in other economic systems, now that you mention it. My point was more that the epidemic move to rent-seeking based business models in the last few decades has become one of the larger problems with our current implementation of capitalism.

The economic model we're looking for is free markets regulated by uncaptured, strong democratic governments. We all know this but political conversations are always dominated by extremists that only focus on one or the other, full communists or full libertarians. But the truth is you need both a strong market and a strong government.

No way.

It is harder and harder to economically squat because competition is now seamlessly global for basically everything except infrastructure. Only in a few very limited circumstances is rent seeking even a viable option today - namely those providers with natural monopolies like water/cable etc...

Across all industries, no one is safe from small disruptive providers. Wasn't even close to that case even a few decades ago.

The paradox is that rent-seeking does create an incentive to build infrastructure, be it a social app, a mobile platform, or a toll road. Whether that sort of Faustian bargain is preferable to a collectist/community solution is debatable.

This isn't the first time it has happened to people who try to build on Twitter (or other people's) ecosystem. I believe the phrase used before was "Picking up pennies in front of a steam roller".

Less interesting to hear about the call from Twitter (hardly unexpected in the context) than about plans for the future. Given Twitter's dislike of external applications, giving Meerkat a decent API and dev platform could make a difference in usage compared to Periscope which may end up too tied to Twitter.

What value did Meerkat offer Twitter? Were they paying for API access, or providing a positive public image for Twitter? Did they work with Twitter at all to get a blessing on their use of the API?

Wasn't the story at the time of shutdown that they were spamming social graphs with messages, sans the user's explicit permission?

This message sounds like so much spin; an attempt to get Meerkat back on the radar by playing the "poor me" card.

Sadly this is yet another instance of closed platform provider pulling the plug with no warning or consideration. I don't think people properly evaluate the risks involved when they invest so heavily in such platforms.

My personal golden rule: Never, no matter how lucrative it might seem, invest in any shape or form in a closed ecosystem.

Or if you do it, think of it as a Ponzi scheme: make sure that you cash in before the steam roller rolls you over!

This not investing - it is gambling.

True, but apparently it does not deter people.

Isn't it all a gamble in the end?

Or its just a case of a platform enforcing its anti-spam and general ToS rules. Meerkat said they knew the call was coming; they knew they were in the wrong. They were just hoping to growth hack or get too big before getting caught. Maybe it's not ethically wrong, but is obvious spin to make it look like Twitter did anything wrong.

In fact, Twitter went out of their way to call these guys and give them a few hours of notice. That's rather nice of them, as it should have been a straightforward "obvious violation, key revoked" scenario. I imagine Twitter wanted to be extra kind and make it clear, but this guy is still trying to milk it.

This new generation of startups really needs to learn some fundamental business and engineering methods, like the value of always having a second source[1].

I cannot understand why some people think it is a sane idea to run a business where the your main product or service depends entirely on a single point of failure; doubly so when that single point of failure is controlled entirely by someone else that can cut you off without consequences.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source

I don't know. It seems like another risk to build in. They had the chance to make a big app and potentially be acquired by Facebook or someone. They didn't win enough people over to put the screws to Twitter, so they lost.

You can't accommodate a single point of failure when that failure is a guarantee that you business fails. The problem with making a business without a second source for your key dependencies is similar to the problem in the martingale[1] betting strategy; the failure mode means you're out of the game and you can't finish any strategy you may use to compensate for a failures.

> be acquired

Oh, that explains it. What you're describing isn't trying to be a successful business. Peasants creating an ornate trinket they hope will impress the local feudal lord is not a business plan.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_%28betting_system%29

You ridicule it, and perhaps rightfully, but it's a pretty good way to make a lot of FU money to be able to turn around and flip off the 'feudal lords' after the handcuffs come off.

What happened to the good ol' "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" adage?

Optimists don't care about baskets because they don't believe their business is made of eggs.

Probably more like, put all eggs in one basket, then run like hell until the basket is too big to fail or someone buys the basket.

It's pretty simple - most people do reject such businesses. You never see the businesses that people researched but gave up early.

Some people take the risk.

Gave a talk to this effect 5 years ago, to an audience including enthusiastic developers aspiring to found this new breed of startups. I expected my comments might be polarizing but instead of arguments got questions which seemed to indicate this was the first time they'd considered the question. It's not necessarily that people think it's a sane idea per se, but that they've become accustomed to the idea that writing code naturally requires approval of these gatekeepers as a starting point. I hope the ecosystem recovers.

I'm not sure how many of you have used Meerkat or Periscope but I used Periscope for the first time the other day and found it EXTREMELY frustrating. Bernie Sanders posted a link to a live stream and I wanted to watch it but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to watch it online (strike 1). There apparently IS a way to do this but I couldn't find it and coming from someone who does web/mobile development for a living that should never happen. So I downloaded the app and signed in with Twitter. Then I tried clicking the link to the stream again but I couldn't get it to open up in the app (strike 2). I then searched for "Bernie Sanders" and found him and clicked the "Follow" button. I then swiped back over to the first screen that shows the current streams for people you follow and it was blank... I don't know how often this updates but I'd expect if I just fucking followed someone (who was streaming LIVE) then this page would update (strike 3). I went back to search and clicked on his name and saw I could click on his picture to jump into his live stream which I did. This seemed to work but the comments/hearts were SUPER FUCKING ANNOYING, I really wish there was a way to disable those covering up the video. I watched the stream (which cut out a few times, this may have just been the streamers connection) and afterwards I wanted to see what I missed at the start but AFAICT there is NO WAY TO WATCH OLD STREAMS (strike 4?). This is deal breaker for me. Fuck your "synchronous" model, it's horseshit. Live streaming is fine but let me watch what they streamed if I missed it or if I came in late.

I don't know about any of you but I am not able to jump on a stream at a seconds notice and then watch the full stream until it's over. My job doesn't allow for that and more importantly my brain won't allow for that. I can't drop everything just to watch something live, I need DVR or similar. I'm fine with temp video (Live stream + online for 14hrs) but live-only? What a MASSIVE step backwards.

It's a shame that Twitter didn't choose the interest graph as its core feature instead of the timeline. Then instead of choking third parties who take away eyeballs but expand Twitter's user base, they'd encourage them. Twitter seems to be trying this belatedly with Fabric, but who's going to trust them now?

Ben Thompson says this better: https://stratechery.com/2015/twitter-might/

1981: "These kinds of programs tend to be quickly developed, sell fast, but don't last long as often the vendor you're tagging along with brings out a new release with your feature in it." http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/section2_2_10.html

At what point does something like Twitter become a monopoly or a utility, and at what point does it become anti-competitive for them to block applications from using their service strictly because they compete? Microsoft's 'crimes' of packaging the browser with the OS seem charming now, it's not like they were preventing you from installing competing browsers.

I don't know the answer but it certainly seems like as a few of these major social networks grow to dominate our lives the regulators may need to step in eventually.

Is there any indication this was anti competitive and not simply because Meerkat was spamming and misusing the API? Meerkat said they knew they were going to get cut sooner or later, they were just hoping they'd slip by quickly.

what was this article even about? I guess I'm not cool enough these days to even know what the cool kid apps are up to. Who are these guys?

Twitter is a great way to build a business. In the beginning, when you have no money for marketing and no traffic, it's fantastic.

But anyone doing so should be simultaneously also building out other ways to get users (getting contact info, pushing them to go to your site, etc).

An API with merely a "one-sided" legal contract is not an API.

I don't understand how Twitter API's terms of use is any different than other API's? They all contain terms that outline the service can be sudden terminated at the discretion of the service provider, particularly in cases of abuse (and Meerkats service certainly fits that category)

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