Peak Twitter?

David Heinemeier Hansson – Twitter's descent into the extractive:

“I wonder how long this one will last?”, asked the Web to his friend Email. “Who knows”, said Email, “Facebook is still around”. “Aye”, nodded the Web, “Winter might be longer this time around, but inevitably Spring will return”.

There’s been another recent uproar due to Twitter enforcing their no more than 100k token policy on newer 3rd party Twitter clients. Two of the most recents clients targetted were Tweetro for Windows 8 and Tweet Lanes for Android. Matthew Panzarino has another great piece on this issue, reacting to Marco Arment’s earlier post:

As far as other developers that are using Twitter’s API to provide either a whole service or a component service inside their app, I think that it’s still too murky to say whether they need to bail. Arment thinks they should, based on the way that Twitter is changing the rules about clients, but, although I understand where he’s coming from, I feel that it’s too early to call this one.

As of this moment, any developer working with Twitter’s API, whether it’s a client or another type of app that is currently in favor, can’t be entirely certain about their livelihood. Right now these apps may be on a path that runs parallel to Twitter’s business plan, but what happens when that path zags?

Note: You can also find me on App.net.