A company is always reliant on its customers, they’re the sole reason that they continue to exist. For small companies customers are even more critical as losing one for them is far more likely to cause problems than when a larger company loses one of theirs. Many recent start ups have hinged on their early adopters not only being closely tied to the product so that they form a shadow PR department but also many of them hobbyist developers, providing additional value to their platform at little to no cost to them. Probably the most successful example of this is Twitter who’s openness with their API fostered the creation of many features (retweets, @ replies, # tags) that they had just never seen before. It seems however that they think the community has gone far enough, and they’re willing to take it from here.
It was about two weeks ago when Twitter updated their terms of service and guidelines for using their API. The most telling part about this was the section that focused on Twitter clients where they explicitly stated that developers should no longer focus on making new clients, and should focus on other verticals:
The gist of what Sarver said is this; Twitter won’t be asking anyone to shut down just as long as they stick within the required api limits. New apps can be built but it doesn’t recommend doing so as it’s ‘not good long term business’. When asked why it wasn’t good long term business, Sarver said because “that is the core area we investing in. There are much bigger, better opportunities within the ecosystem”
Sarver insists this isn’t Twitter putting the hammer down on developers but rather just “trying to be as transparent as possible and give the guidance that partners and developers have been asking for.”
To be honest with you they do have a point. If you take a look at the usage breakdown by client type you’ll notice that 43% of Twitter’s usage comes from non official apps, and diving into that shows that the vast majority of unofficial clients don’t drive that much traffic with 4 apps claiming the lion’s share of Twitter traffic. A developer looking to create a new client would be running up against a heavy bit of inertia trying to differentiate themselves from the pack of “Other Apps” that make up the 24% of Twitter’s unofficial app usage, but that doesn’t mean someone might not be capable of actually doing it. Hell the official client wasn’t even developed by Twitter in the first place, they just bought the most popular one and made it free for everyone to use.
Twitter isn’t alone in annoying its loyal developer following. HTC recently debuted one of their new handsets, the Thunderbolt. Like many HTC devices its expected that there will be a healthy hacking scene around the new device, usually centered on th xda-developers board. Their site has really proved to be invaluable to the HTC brand and I know I stuck with my HTC branded phones for much longer than I would have otherwise thanks to the hard work these guys put in. However this particular handset is by far one of the most locked down on the market, requiring all ROMs to be signed with a secret key. Sure they’ve come up against similar things in the past but this latest offering seems to be a step above what they normally put in, signalling this a shot across the bow of those who would seek to run custom firmware on their new HTC.
In both cases these companies had solid core products that the community was able to extend upon which provided immense amounts of value that came at zero cost to them. Whilst I can’t attribute all the success to the community it’s safe to say that the staggering growth that these companies experienced was catalyzed by the community they created. To suddenly push aside those who helped you reach the success you achieved seems rather arrogant but unfortunately it’s probably to be expected. Twitter is simply trying to grab back some of the control of their platform so they can monetize it since they’re still struggling to make decent revenues despite their huge user base. HTC is more than likely facing pressure from carriers to make their handsets more secure, even if that comes at the cost of annoying their loyal developer community.
Still in both these situations I feel like there would have been a better way to achieve the goals they sought without poisoning the well that once sustained them. Twitter could easily pull a Facebook maneuver and make all advertising come through them directly, which they could do via their own in house system or by simply buying a company like Ad.ly. HTC’s problem is a little more complex but I still can’t understand why the usual line of “if you unlock/flash/hack it, you’re warranty’s void” wasn’t enough for them. I’m not about to say that these moves signal the down fall of either company but it’s definitely not doing them any favors.
