Twitter started out life as a wonderfully inclusive society. There were very few rules and the ones there were the people loved. Thou shall be brief, retweet to respect. Under this constrained freedom, Twitter prospered and grew rapidly for the joy of all.
Budding entrepreneurs built apps that made life better for everyone. Better, in fact, than many of Twitter’s own attempts. They competed for attention on a level playing field and the very best rose to the top. Users saw that this was good and rewarded Twitter with their attention. Twitter grew.
Unfortunately this inclusive world was not meant to last. From the beginning, an extractive time bomb was ticking. One billion dollars worth of eagerness for return. Hundreds and hundreds of hungry mouths to feed in a San Francisco lair.
And thus began Twitter’s descent into the extractive. First, they paid lip service to the society. Their curtailing of freedoms was for the betterment of all, you see.
The “consistency of the user experience” was imported as a new ideal. But the populace was nonplussed. Who was this ideal for? Who had asked for variety to be curtailed? Not us, said the people.
But objections be damned, the Twitter lords marched on. After all, they knew the billion was growing restless and the minions in their lair equally so. Turning back now was not on the table, lest they risk the anger and fury of the billion.
So it went that the extractive provisions were rolled out quicker and wider. The initial feigned attempts at covering new rules and restrictions with “it’s in everyone’s interest” fell further by the wayside with every new decree from the lords.
While the original rules were simple and fair—140 characters for all—the new rules were complicated, opaque, and easy to bend for the favored.
Some early app entrepreneurs would get access to 200,000+ users by the nature of their legacy stature; new ones would get half. Favored masters of Big Media would get to break the law of 140. And the Twitter lords themselves would expropriate and evict on a whim.
The populace grumbled and groaned, but like the frog boiled slowly, they adjusted to their new temperature one degree at a time.
Twitter’s billion was happy. Progress was being made to extract the most from these fertile lands it had lent. And with the billion happy, the lords were happy, and so too all of the lair.
“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”.
Megan
on 17 Nov 12lol
eik3
on 17 Nov 12So, why is https://alpha.app.net/dhh still “404”?
N.B.
on 17 Nov 12nonplussed doesn’t mean what you think it does
Luigi Montanez
on 17 Nov 12Any site can participate in the expanded tweets feature (Twitter Cards):
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards
But yes, you do have to apply and be approved.
N.B. N.B.
on 17 Nov 12Actually, it means exactly what he thinks it does.
Ivan Vásquez
on 17 Nov 12Nice read. If Morgan Freeman reads it in your mind it sounds even better, specially the last part.
Gabi Purcaru
on 17 Nov 12@Luigi Montanez actually, I applied for the player card a while back, and today I got the response from Twitter: the site got approved. For the OTHER TWO card types. So, your argument validates the post.
ESP
on 17 Nov 12Like you do your ‘pruning’, they can do whatever they want, correct ? Why are you complaining ?
Tering Nering
on 17 Nov 12Till someone starts a p2p microblogging system – without central authority. Chatter Blockhain anyone?
GeeIWonder
on 17 Nov 12Suggest laying off the Tolkien for awhile.
PPC4
on 17 Nov 12@ESP Pruning for beauty and elegance with eventual profit involved vs. hacking off limbs for profit now while feigning concern for beauty and elegance…
vas
on 17 Nov 12@ESP I can simultaneously and with no contradiction support the KKK’s freedom of speech and denounce their speech.
MB
on 17 Nov 12- Yes, there is a difference between free speech and cheap talk.
- I admire that 37s has avoided the tyranny of the majority in their weighting of user-driven suggestions for feature add-ons. Companies don’t collapse overnight; they sell their souls piece by piece—one day at a time.
Mike Kim New York
on 17 Nov 12It reads like a fairy tale with no idea what it’s saying. Twitter’s gone downhill, or so you say. Are you mad about the dickslap to developers or its popularity sinking as a communication tool?
Romain
on 17 Nov 12Very good piece, thanks.
Anonymous Coward
on 17 Nov 12Well, what do you suggest they do? I always thought the problem with Twitter was that they never had a good way to make the service pay for itself, something that was written about at length on this blog. Now if they want to start showing more advertising then it makes sense to control how it’s presented to the viewers.
CRS
on 17 Nov 12Boy, the thesaurus got a workout on that one!
Robert
on 17 Nov 12The trolls in here really go with the story.
Bob McGuffin
on 17 Nov 12I think you’re taking this waaaay too seriously – it’s only a service for people talking rubbish to each other, the world span perfectly well before it arrived and it’ll spin perfectly well after it’s gone too. It’s also a free service which means you don’t get a say in the matter, if you don’t want to use it you know where the door is.
max
on 18 Nov 12I approve of your eloquently written post. Unfortunately, staying lean comes at odds with the modern rules of capital. And there are abounded influx of frogs willing to be boiled. I hope we’re not off to a nuclear winter.
Steve
on 18 Nov 12The politics of communities isn’t easy. Most community owners are under the impression that they are autocrats. Seen it all before.
Steve
on 18 Nov 12Correction: Digital community owners are by definition autocrats. They just don’t, in general, make good decisions on behalf of the community that they own after it develops beyond their original intent/vision… and that is the symptom I have observed.
Hardik
on 18 Nov 12Nice piece David! May I suggest you add a link to join.app.net to the last line after Spring?
@Ivan in my head it’s usually Bernard Shaw, but I could live with Morgan Freeman :)
Kevin
on 18 Nov 12It’s funny that right below the post it says “Follow David on Twitter”
Derek
on 18 Nov 12I read this in Norm MacDonald’s voice. It was hilarious.
BS
on 19 Nov 12The part at the end with “The Web” talking to his friend “Email” is pure gold, and absolutely spot on. I am not on Facebook and when I mention that, some people say “Oh my god, how do you communicate with others” My answer is always, “Uh email, Skype and this crazy little thing I call a phone.”
David Andersen
on 19 Nov 12I can’t believe they have 1500 employees. That’s crazy.
aepglmfg
on 20 Nov 121
paul apfrod
on 22 Nov 12https://tent.io/ anyone? It brings me hope but I still don’t actually use it for some reason.
Absolutely love that last paragraph.
This discussion is closed.