The SocialToo Blog - Latest Comments in Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Jhonny — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:09:04 -0000

You guys should check out this twitter app www.sponsoraloser.com It's about posting twitter losers and finding them the answer to their problems, It's very funny! and It's all about helping others.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

tychoish — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:00:33 -0000

While original comment is 6 months old, and I'm not sure if the events of the past six months are worth anything (and I don't have the time at this moment to consider these implications), here's a clarification:

- I don't mean to present a black and white moral system on this issue. It can be both "not a sin," and also "not a good thing." It's not, I think, a transgression to develop for a closed platform in an open way, and also I think it's true that putting users/developers at the mercy of another party is something that should be avoided.

- Perhaps I should have said "isn't neccessarily a bad thing."

We have examples of people developing tools aplenty. Emacs/Cgywin/Notepad++ and so forth all exist for windows and people put a lot of time into that, and that's not bad, but I think everyone's a bit wary of that kind of work becasue of the way it requires them to have their work exist at the mercy of other people.

Or hell, I think the whole mono debate is contentious *because* of this tension...

Cheers,
sam

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

candrewswpi — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:38:51 -0000

I don't understand how you can make 2 completely contradictory statements in the *same sentence.* How can "Developing for closed platforms isn't a bad thing at all" be true, while "developers completely at the mercy of another party" (in other words, your business model is in someone else's hands) is also true?

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Jeff Donchez — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:59:40 -0000

yeah, now it's down to 150 requests per hour.. my client's twitter account has 11000+ friends and 11000+ followers.. I can't even do an api request to get their names (just their ids) because trying to get their names from the list of ips gives me the "over the limit" error

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

sikis — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:49:50 -0000

platforms/sites end up moving things in a direction that helps their business, but hurts the crowd, are *very frustrating* but also not surprising. Alex is a great guy, twitter is a very inspiring platform (that secedes because of the number of users, and the tools that Alex has helped provide for), but it's still a business that really has to serve it's own interest, and if this doesn't illustrate the worth and utility

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Jesse Stay — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:33:14 -0000

David, only to an extent. The only solution I've been able to come up with
is scale to lots of servers, which I'm doing now.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

david — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:12:34 -0000

Using smart caching locally can help.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

jsinkeywest — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:35:27 -0000

Twitter to me is a bunch of snob losers that want you to check out their HOT thing and they never have any intention of reciprocating,if Google bought Twitter and closed it down I wouldn't miss a beat.
2009 is going to be rough people are to picky and don't appreciate JACK
sadly like a old prostitute society on the internet will use you abuse you and walk away :)
Despite all that :) It's great to see a QUALITY blog that is Do follow,mine is also and I'm
on the LOOKOUT to network with cool people. If you know what I mean Bring IT :)
Nice blog Stumbled

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

tychoish — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:58:16 -0000

If microblogging were implemented as an XMPP service, your friends/follwers would be the "roster," (or abstracted as such) or as members of a multi-user-chat (or abstracted as such), and getting a list of users, would be a single request/stream from the server.

OMB doesn't directly solve the API problem, but it does so indirectly: no OMB server needs to "hold" the entire microblogging world (like twitter needs to), so the scaling problems that twitter has with its API limits aren't likely to be as much of a sore point. Secondly, you can set up a local/private OMB instance that would allow you to write your App/site against a "local" platform/site, rather than against a third party site...

---

Having said that, these kinds of problem where "crowd sourced" platforms/sites end up moving things in a direction that helps their business, but hurts the crowd, are *very frustrating* but also not surprising. Alex is a great guy, twitter is a very inspiring platform (that secedes because of the number of users, and the tools that Alex has helped provide for), but it's still a business that really has to serve it's own interest, and if this doesn't illustrate the worth and utility of open source, and the software freedom approach, then I don't know what would.

The heart of twitter's issue, is that when they thought they were providing a "status message service" they never really expected that they'd be creating what amounts to a public messaging and communications service; combined with the fact that non-niche web-services are incredibly difficult to monetize/collect subscriber fee's for...

Developing for closed platforms isn't a bad thing at all--often--but it does put developers completely at the mercy of another party, and that's pretty tough to stomach.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Jesse Stay — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:57:48 -0000

None of this helps getting a user's friends and followers, which is the
heart of this issue.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Bertil — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:34:23 -0000

Rather then considering the hard-to-estimate value-added, you might want to consider costs to Twitter; this would make tour service neutral to them, and you'd be in a safer position later to negotiate the (then better known) value created by being the largest information network.

Otherwise, advertising might be the better solution (like spam-filtering, your service is valuable, but hard to put a price on). Were would you be able to put some?

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Bertil — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:30:06 -0000

I'm not sure the competition is between closed and open-source services. It is an important aspect — but adoption of the service is the first step. Compatibility with other service is the only way out of a monopoly, and then, you have to argue in favor of open code.

I say that because the source behind Twitter is not the hardest asset to copy: leveraging a community of practice is. The people behind the Open Stack and DiSo realized that their arch-enemy, Facebook Connect, not only offers a better experience (thanks to good UI and market-base) but also drive massive press and attention to their solutions. Just like them, you need to push Twitter (and its equivalents/competitors) to learn about how to do micro-blogging properly, and let people learn about micro-blogging.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Bertil — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:24:26 -0000

The way you present is makes Twitter look cold towards their eco-sphere — which is surprising given how many partners and clients they have; maybe they've tried and are coming back from it, but their success is heavily wired to that strategy, and they appear not too ignorant of that fact. Therefore, I would let them the benefit of the doubt and imagine they have good reasons to do what they seem to have decided. Money appeared tight recently, and saving on the few rather wasteful services (albeit the only way to have Guy's new followers, you method is a real bleeding).

Regarding the specific features that you want, I would make a distinction between:
* new followers (an information users can get by e-mail, and that they might agree to forward to you, with a simple IMAP filter); and
* people who stopped following a certain user.

As pointed out by the extensive literature, interrupted relations or more generally most negative news impair greatly a social service. It's the first question I get asked about Facebook or Twitter, and I can give you examples of services whose usage dropped days after implementing a look-back feature. By empowering Guy, you remove my ability (and some would say 'right') to stop being fed his every move without him knowing. Guy is a great guy, and he knows he twits too much, and probably wouldn't be offended. Others might like that with less detachment, and drama will not only happen, but get front-page treatment. That is threatening to Twitter because, with services such as yours and your competitor's, they cannot guarantee the same freedom to browse feeds.

Twitter, or Facebook who recently banned the Whooper Sacrifice application, do not want the balance of information tilt that way. Given Facebook massive lack of personnel, any of they move is most likely triggered by users. I do not think they decided to remove such a popular app without good reasons, namely users offended either by the fact that they were un-friended, or who forgot they had the application active and un-friended someone who took offense. It could be that non-important friends, aka 'weak-ties' are essential to their success (they are) but I doubt ten of those were worth the ban.

It's a matter of opinion, and would be hard to prove, but the success of a technology such as yours demands that you balance the right to know with the right to remain discreet; a majority of experts would agree with me.

Finally, I would love to have an alert saying that the recent user that friended me is apparently a spambot — provided you give the people behind those the ability to challenge your call. Twitter would love to have the ability to list those, and find out which one are useless, or do not respect the terms of services to ban them, and save some money; maybe they already do.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

tychoish — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:29:38 -0000

A couple of things:

1. XMPP. if they provided XMPP pub/sub nodes for users feeds and data.... data could be pushed, if people were smart about things, it would scale better than repeated HTTP polling, and it would be awesome.

2. Open Microblogging, Laconica is compatible with the twitter api, provides XMPP *and* services could build implementations of open microblogging that let them subscribe to their clients via that network, and not have to deal with polling limits.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Christopher_Ross — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:10:25 -0000

Well, I don't know. But I think that this (throttling API calls) will cause a good disruption in the twitter application community. If a developer is not able to find an audience to support their product, they'll either have to dig deep and cover their costs until they do, or rethink the relevance of their product in the market.

The bar gets set higher, and I think we're all the better for it as both developers and end users.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Kevin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:58:37 -0000

i asked alex about removing the rate limit. he asnwered that that their new year resolution. I was under impression that there wont be any rlimit on APIs.. though 20K is much more cmpared to existing 100 limits... however as applications grows and traffic increases 20K will look like a small figure

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

william — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:45:54 -0000

The Elephant in the room

If you are an Open Source Developer or Content creator (If you are a member of either service you are a content creator) you should not use Facebook or Twitter.

By using Facebook or Twitter you are essentially raising the value of their companies and applications. Both Facebook and Twitter are closed source content silos that do not allow you to control the content that you create. Neither Facebook or Twitter put the content creator/members at the top of their pyramids when thinking about revenue models. Each of these companies puts their Companies first above the members and communities that have given them value and money.

If you are a developer you may be able to make some money by creating applications for Facebook or Twitter ; but I do not believe that Facebook or Twitter will ever allow your application to eat into their user base or their revenue. Because they are both closed source companies that have the ability to literally cut you off by changing the code/api or by using their proprietary knowledge to build an application that you can not possibly compete with. As a coder understand that when you build and extend Facebook or Twitters propitiatory platforms that you undermine the longevity of the Open Internet.

Content owners and Developers do not help these closed source companies (Twitter and Facebook) in their goal of creating another closed source content trap that will extract hundreds of Millions on dollars from their member and developer communities and give nothing back in return.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Christopher_Ross — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:07:23 -0000

I can appreciate the concerns and thank you for going through the numbers for your readers. However, I was hoping that somewhere within your post you would have offered an olive branch in the form of a payment structure you would fine reasonable, given the value twitter and their API offer to you.

What would you find a reasonable starting point?

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Jesse Stay — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:14:23 -0000

Christopher, I haven't really thought of that yet, to tell you the truth.
If we did pay for API access, we would have to pass it back to our users in
some form in the form of subscription or advertising. How much would you be
willing to pay? I guess that would be the determining factor.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

F. Andy Seidl — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:16:47 -0000

>>Would you like it if a service you made could only deal with one customer per hour because of changes by a third party?<<
Of course not, but that is not what I am suggesting.

What am suggesting is that the ideal approach is not to raise the limit on the number of requests per hour, but raise the limit on how much work each request can accomplish.

For many reasons, it would be far more efficient to perform many operation right at the service (i.e., at Twitter) rather than by requiring the client to do it in hundreds of bits and pieces. If you had to unload a pick-up truck full of sand, it would be very slow going if you were forced to make thousands of trips with a teaspoon. Far better would be to make a few dozen trips with a wheelbarrel.

From Twitter's point of view, they are allowing each service to make 5.5 requests per second on average, 24 hours per day. That is actually very generous, IMO, for a free service. By offering smarter API methods, they could increase by orders of magnitute the work that a client application could accomplish in the same number of request. And in many cases, this would also result in LESS CPU time AND LESS bandwidth. E.g., getting Guy K.'s new subscribers would result in transfering a relatively short list of results compared to transfering his entire subscriber list every time. It is also likely to take less CPU time (in aggregate) on Twitter's end by eliminating all the overhead of hundreds of API invocations, credential verification, etc.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Jesse Stay — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:30:21 -0000

Andy, I agree - that would make things magnitudes easier and more
possible.

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Scott C. Lemon — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:30:10 -0000

But Jesse ... of course installing on the client is possible! There are several solutions to work around the limits, and then carefully enroll the folks at twitter about the benefits of updating and enhancing their API.

Whining and complaining will probably not work ... :-(

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

@JoeHobot — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:27:06 -0000

I thought this is not "by IP" but over all 20.000 requests ( but to answer your question between 50-200) i would say. now multiply that by 1000 or 2000 users (not that I have that many) I would be screwed too!

I feel bad for SocialToo but I do feel bad for Twitter as well, they dont have any revenue income yet from "Ads" yet their servers suck big time. They could of at least hire nice CCNP to clear some data

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

@JoeHobot — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:17:28 -0000

I guess my twitter mobile app is going to change too! that's bad news!

http://m.mwd.com

Re: Private: Twitter Apps Can Only Grow so Far

Thom Allen — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:09:06 -0000

Yeah, it probably wasn't a good idea to pull the carpet that fast, and like I said, Twitter should have engaged the development community first, that would have made the transition easier. Could have been handled a little better.

But what do you think about external services causing issues with the overall service that affects the average person who just uses Twitter. Should they suffer because companies want complete and unfettered use of the API and it's resources? Doesn't sound too fair too me. I understand you position on timing, they have more to worry about than external services.