Because the user is the customer. With Twitter, the advertiser is the customer, and the user is the product. This leads to seemingly-capricious changes like the recent backlash against third-party developers. But when the user is the customer, then the business's goals are aligned with the user's.
I was with you until the last sentence. How does that help developers who are being harmed under the advertiser arrangement?
The developers still make up a minority of the user revenue. Even if that flipped...there are multiple customer interests at play. Developers, member users, and the company.
No advertisers is better than advertisers, but I don't see anything that protects developers (except Dalton's word, which you didn't bring up) from similar fates in this model.
But couldn't part of the potential be that a 3rd party developer ecosystem that feels healthy and secure will focus on providing added value for users, thereby encouraging more users? More developers? More revenue? And assumedly proving the developers worth to the company as being greater than just their $100/year (or whatever it ends up being)? I'm not saying that all parties are always going to get along like a friendly gang-bang, but I don't think it is as simple as 'The developers still make up a minority of the user revenue.'
A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.
I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)
OK fair enough. But I could have sworn I was just replying directly to something you said in your above comment. And I don't think I took it too far out of context. :)
> A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.
Agreed. But what would you think the split would be on tide shifting regarding 3rd party development due to advertisers vs. 'normal people' signing up? I'd still bet on the former being the more pressing issue.
> I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)
For me personally, I'm more excited about losing the advertisers. But now that you mention it, maybe losing (at least for a while) the mediocre users you speak of is just an added bonus. :P
Of course, not I or anyone else knows how App.net is going to turn out at this point, but I'm approaching it with curiosity at this stage, I don't yet see a reson to add morbidity.
The 3rd-party developers add value for the users. If the users are customers, then this is a good thing for the business.
In Twitter's case, the 3rd-party developers add value for the users, but subtract value from advertisers. This is good for users, but since the advertisers are Twitter's customers, this is bad for Twitter's business.
