Twitter isn't making any friends lately, as Tumblr becomes the latest site to have its “Find Twitter Friends” privileges revoked as Twitter continues to create a walled-garden.
Tumblr, a blogging platform that is home to over 52 400 000 blogs, has said it is dismayed at Twitter's decision to restrict the find friends functionality. The news follows shortly after Twitter cut off major photo-sharing platform Instagram, in a similar way. Twitter has also recently ended its partnership with LinkedIn.
“Given our history of embracing their platform, this is especially upsetting,” says Tumblr. “Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets, and we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter's first partners. While we're delighted by the response to our integrations with Facebook and Gmail, we are truly disappointed by Twitter's decision.”
Twitter has been ruffling feathers across the industry recently with the tightening of restrictions on its API and clamping down on third-party clients. According to Twitter, the changes are being implemented in order to create a “consistent Twitter experience”.
The new regulations strongly discourage the repurposing of Twitter content, encouraging developers to focus on business applications and analytics rather than traditional Twitter clients and syndication.
While Twitter has warned of the changes for a long time, now that they are being implemented questions have been raised over whether developers whom have been integral to the growth of Twitter and its ecosystem will continue to invest in the platform.
Vulnerable position
Curtis says it is noteworthy that the majority of Twitter users actually don't tweet, but rather use it more in the way they use TV - to follow their interests and consume content. This follow graph from Twitter is as a result more valuable than the friend graph on platforms like Facebook, because it is directly monetisable.
“I suspect the reason that Twitter is cutting off apps from using its 'friend finder' feature is because most people do not create content in Twitter and therefore have no incentive to use Twitter outside of the value of its graph. Unlike replicating or using the Facebook graph externally, relocating the Twitter graph can have disastrous consequences for Twitter.”
Curtis says this makes Twitter very vulnerable: “Twitter is in an even worse position than MySpace to fight off a disruptive competitor.” As a result, Twitter is creating a walled-garden to maintain the value of its data.
“The problem with this solution is that Twitter was built on the backs of the very developers it is now blocking. It now expects those developers to continue supporting Twitter by syndicating content into its platform, but it no longer wants to provide any value to developers in return. This is an extremely dangerous position, because it creates resentment in the minds of the people most likely to influence the future.”
When Twitter first announced the changes to its API, creator of Instapaper, Marco Arment said: “Twitter has proven to be unstable and unpredictable, and any assurances they give about whether something will be permitted in the future have zero credibility.
“I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any non-trivial features on it anymore. And if I were in the Twitter-client business, I'd start working on another product.”
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