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Twitter Tuesday - Twitter bans third-party ads, plans to tax developers
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First up, ads. In preparation for the launch of its own ad system, Promoted Tweets, Twitter has banned third-party ad services from advertising in the Twitter timeline. This is terrible news for companies like Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets, who have now basically lost their entire revenue streams. Twitter made a similar move earlier this year by creating official Twitter apps that compete directly with third-party developers. It seems the community thought that Twitter would just be a passive pipe, but Twitter is aggressively seeking out ways to make money and snapping them up.
Twitter is also going to start seeking a cut of the revenues from companies who are making money off its stream. MediaMemo found a vague reference to this in the new Terms of Services, and sparred with Twitter COO Dick Costolo over the phone. They came away convinced that Twitter doesn't know who they're going to be taxing, or how much, but that they want to leave that option open. This looks like another way to push companies toward using Promoted Tweets.
Twitter's other controversial move in the past week was removing old-style retweets (the ones that start with RT) from some of its search results. This really ticked off people who still hate the new retweet -- and may I say, get over it? -- so Twitter ended up reverting it. Fortunately, Twitter says it's still looking for ways to filter out duplicate content, especially when it comes to trending topics.
Twitter for iPhone -- formerly known as Tweetie -- finally came out this week, and I wish I had stuck with my old version of Tweetie. The changes Twitter asked for have cluttered up Loren Brichter's design, getting rid of his innovative retweets that showed the icons of the original poster and the retweeter. It's been replaced with "retweeted by" text, making the people who hate seeing strangers' icons in their streams even more unhappy. Retweet also has its own button in the tweet action menu -- the one you open by swiping across a tweet -- instead of being part of another button. I know it's nitpicky, but four buttons are cleaner than five, and retweet was easy enough to find before. Also, don't get me started about the newly-prominent trending topics, or the markedly uglier icon. I don't blame Loren one bit, because he seems to have achieved what Twitter asked of him while minimizing the damage to his app, but what Twitter wants only made Tweetie more cluttered. Bummer.
I'm not ready to ditch Twitter's official app just yet, but if you are, you might want to check out the new iPhone version of Seesmic. It works with Twitter and Facebook, and has an interesting panel-based interface that feels very iPhone-esque. Panels can contain accounts, saved searches, trending topics, or lists. You can just tap to add a panel, or tap and hold to delete one. Seesmic has all of the features you'd expect from a current Twitter app -- lists, geolocation, etc. -- and looks like a solid new contender in the iPhone arena.
Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsdigamejhMay 25th 2010 2:23PM
I don't like new-style retweets because I can't add my own comment/reply before or after them.
This tax also sounds like bad news for my favorite client: TweetSheet (http://iphone-chieftain.blogspot.com)
PonTelonMay 25th 2010 3:11PM
If you want to get the old-Retweet funcationality in the Twitter official app, you can use the menu on the bottom to do "Quote Tweet" then just add "RT" to the front.
WernerAMay 26th 2010 6:27AM
I predict that this is the end of twitter. Taxing 3rd party developers might work for something like facebook, because well... facebook apps actually made a few developers rich. There are a ton of free Twitter tools, but the moment twitter charge those developers I'd say at least 70% will drop their projects (why pay tax on something that is next to impossible to monetize?)
Twitter itself a great idea, but it is not an idea you build a company from. I see in their blog post that they employ 200 people. Can you imagine their montly expeses? I feel sorry for the poor venture capitalists who pour their money into this black hole.
Jeff HesserMay 26th 2010 8:59AM
so you predict that twitter is going to die because there may not be 50 crappy twitter clients (and maybe 2 or 3 good ones)? This may be the end of people (twitter app devs) trying to make money from someone elses (twitter) idea but I doubt having fewer unofficial apps will really spell the demise of twitter as a company.
WernerAMay 26th 2010 10:02AM
I partly agree with you in the sense that the "Twitter Snowball" is so huge and has so much momentum that it will probably never die, but in that same breath, 5 of my friends worked for startups, and the story was always the same:
Round 1: Massive venture capital injection (nothing less than $10mil). They employ people left right and centre. The one startup my friend worked for had 2 DBA's - you know, for just in case the one is hit by a bus. It was one awesome gravy train and my friend made tons of money.
Round 2: Thee years later - product is not "monetized" yet, startup asks for another 10mil and continue to employ more people.
Round 3: Same story, only this time, the VC's want a return on their investment. Startup cannot do that and the VC's pull out.
Twitter is basically following down that exact path, and they publically admitted that they're not exactly sure how to monetise this whole thing. They have 200 employees.... doing what exactly?
Is it so far fetched to say that there are some scary similarities between twitter and a whole slew of failed startups? I think not - but lets hope they come up with some brilliant idea to keep their investors happy.
Twitter ToolboxMay 26th 2010 10:46AM
I guess this is all part of life on the internet - everything changes quickly.
The next wave I see is the extinction of free social media apps: if developers have to pay - then so will we.
As for an iPhone Twitter app: I prefer TweetDeck.