Can someone name me an instance where a site as popular as Twitter eventually flopped because it didn't play nicely with third-party developers? I can't think of one, although I most certainly could be wrong.
There seems to be this idea that angry developers -> no apps -> crappier service -> users leaving, and I just don't see it. Apple has long been screwing developers with their App Store and yet how many thousands are out there coding away at their iPhone games, playing by every rule, however arbitrary, that Apple implements?
Developers aren't going to kill Twitter, but a better service more attractive to users will. I'm of the belief that at this point, Twitter's developed such a huge brand that the lack of app choices alone is nowhere near enough to decrease user engagement. Twitter is constantly on CNN, a myriad of other news channels, and almost every major celebrity tweet I've seen has been made from either the Twitter web interface or their Mac/iOS app.
Users have a much, much larger threshold of "abuse" than many people here seem to believe. Facebook ads, Twitter ads, no third-party Twitter apps, etc, are all very minor annoyances, if you can even call them that, to the majority of users. So while Twitter's new move is certainly frustrating for the developers that helped give them a boost initially, they've certainly got the momentum, brand-recognition, and celebrity engagement to keep them going for a while.
Twitter isn't going to die. At worst, it's merely going to cease being buzzworthy.
(Of course, in Silicon Valley this could feel like death.)
Twitter is probably going to be a fairly successful broadcast network for celebs. The fans will stay because that's where the celebs are, and the celebs will stay because that's where the fans are. And it's a nice medium for celebs: You don't have to write a lot of copy, sign any autographs, or even put on pants. Twitter could go on for decades as the new Entertainment Tonight. Certainly that must be their hope.
What might be dead are all the dreams that Twitter could be anything more than the new version of the E! network. People in Silicon Valley will speak of it about as often as they speak of NBC or HBO, and in much the same tones.
Celebrities are much more mobile than ordinary users. There aren't very many of them, they have social media teams/services who can post their content across multiple sites at no meaningful cost to themselves, and they have a large financial interest in the whole enterprise.
> Can someone name me an instance where a site as popular as Twitter eventually flopped because it didn't play nicely with third-party developers?
The internet is still very new, the internet in its current form is even newer. Facebook is ~8 years old, Twitter is ~6 years old, it's probably not even worth considering previous examples of social sites and developers because even Twitter in 2010 and Twitter now is significantly different (as a company, product and community).
What I'm curious is when devs stop blocking Twitter on their end. It's a hard business decision since Twitter does drive so much traffic, but I'm curious how many links are published from instagram, foursquare, tumblr, etc., I'd wager that tweets published from services like this aren't a trivial part of Twitter's traffic. I wonder if it would really have an affect on Twitter and if users would bother to manually tweet. While this is anecdotal evidence, I know a fair amount of people who went to Twitter because these services were linked to it.
It's all relative, isn't it? The App Store has a pretty good story as far as development and especially deployment go, especially compared to prior mobile platforms.
Quite to the contrary as what is being supposed, a deluge of mediocre developers has actually ruined more than one platform.
Pre-Nintendo, the entire video game industry crashed because of awful developers. When Nintendo broke into the scene, they were notorious for their stringent quality guidelines and hated for some time as a result.
They weren't hated for their "stringent quality guidelines" they were hated for their censorship of video games and essentially telling developers to change things for really really stupid reasons. The only people that hated Nintendo were people who had to release through NOA because NoJ did not care at all.
Is that a cross symbol on a hospital in Mother 2? Better change that because I heard crosses are religious symbols and that's not allowed by NOA! Want to release more than 5 games in a year? Not allowed by NOA so better form some shell companies like Konami did by creating Ultragames (released Metal Gear for NES and TMNT). Want to call your boss Hellbat? Sorry better change it to Devilbat.
Want to make a game for a Nintendo console (which during that time they held pretty much a monopoly since what else did you have besides Gameboy and NES? Gameboy/NES held a large portion of the market)? Well you better order a minimum amount of cartridges. "Because we certainly don't want another video game crash like we had in 1983"
At least it's different now right? Oh wait, they're still kinda dicks to this very day.
Developers didn't cause the crash of 1983. Greedy companies did. Developers weren't the ones who decided that ET the video game needed to be finished by Christmas after starting the project in July of that same year. Imagine having 6 months to finish anything as difficult as a video game.
Similarly, Atari rushed Pac Man, and overproduced. "Given the popularity of the property, Atari produced 12 million units, anticipating a high number of sales." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(Atari_2600) At the time, there weren't even 12 million consoles in existence - they'd banked on people buying consoles just to play Pac Man at home.
What's ironic then, is that Nintendo has slowly lost its dominance over the video game console industry by its slow erosion of its developer base.
PlayStation was hugely enabled by Square "rebelling" against Nintendo and siding with Sony, while XBox has broken through at least partly through its fervent support for its developers.
What's ironic then, is that Nintendo has slowly lost its dominance over the video game console industry...
How are you measuring dominance? I don't really follow these types of things closely, but hasn't Nintendo been in the video game business longer than any of its current competitors and hasn't the Wii dramatically outsold it's current crop of competitors? They've certainly had plenty of flops and bad years, but who exactly is more dominant than Nintendo in the console arena?
The Wii is winning if the only metric is pure console sales. I know personally that even though I own one. I've played a single game on it in the last 2 years and the last 6 months it's been delegated to a Netflix machine in the bedroom. I wouldn't exactly label that "dominance" of the current generation.
Plus, all you have to do is go back a single console generation and you have the Gamecube which was absolutely dominated in pretty much any category you can think of by the Playstation 2. Even the Xbox, a console by a company no one though should develop a console, managed to beat the Gamecube in sales.
Go back one generation further and again the Playstation dominated the Nintendo 64.
I would argue that Nintendo hasn't been in a dominant position in a very long time. The sales of the Wii were a big win for Nintendo, but they aren't really delivering on the games front. The Wii was sold at a time when the casual market was ready to explode. But now it's just turned into that thing no one uses. Hell, I bought a $99 Wii for my girlfriend's parents mainly so they would be able to watch Netflix. Sure, it was another Wii sale, but that's not exactly what we usually talk about when we talk about dominance in the gaming industry.
It takes a lot of dancing to try to claim otherwise, but a lot of people seem ready to do that dance. I'm not sure why. I don't like Apple particularly well personally, but I don't try to run around proving they aren't an extremely successful company.
Oh, and if we're going to talk console dominance, one should probably not forget that Nintendo has simply owned the portable gaming world for 12 years now, since the Gameboy came out. The only thing that has ever successfully competed with the Gameboy or DS lines are the next Nintendo model.
Agreed on the portable gaming world, but I don't think it's difficult to see how Nintendo's position in the console gaming market is not nearly as strong as strong as it was during its NES/SNES days.
Nintendo is a bit different from the other brands on hardware sales though. If you bought a PS3 or 360 at launch and didn't buy any games, you were actually hurting Microsoft and Sony because they lost money on each console sold. Nintendo sells the Wii at a profit. Just buying a console and never using it gives them money. The same can't be said for the others.
Wii has outsold PS3 and 360 by about 50% each, but not combined. But based on shelf space devoted to games in stores, you'd probably guess Wii was losing. Their dominance is somewhat less than dominant.
Their console has generally been cheaper and more aimed at casual gamers and young kids, which happens to be a bigger target market. They are also less likely to stay engaged and continue to purchase additional games though.
Nintendo's two consoles before the Wii were vastly outsold by their competitors, Sony's Playstation brand. The point that was being made: Nintendo suffered, at least in the past, because third party developers jumped ship. They may have had a comeback by going after a different market, but that's hardly remaining "dominant", unless you consider Microsoft's Xbox line a complete flop.
Due to the Nintendo 3DS, not their core Wii product. Sony and Microsoft have bled billions year after year while Nintendo raked it in, a single year's loss is nothing in comparison.
There seems to be this idea that angry developers -> no apps -> crappier service -> users leaving, and I just don't see it. Apple has long been screwing developers with their App Store and yet how many thousands are out there coding away at their iPhone games, playing by every rule, however arbitrary, that Apple implements?
Developers aren't going to kill Twitter, but a better service more attractive to users will. I'm of the belief that at this point, Twitter's developed such a huge brand that the lack of app choices alone is nowhere near enough to decrease user engagement. Twitter is constantly on CNN, a myriad of other news channels, and almost every major celebrity tweet I've seen has been made from either the Twitter web interface or their Mac/iOS app.
Users have a much, much larger threshold of "abuse" than many people here seem to believe. Facebook ads, Twitter ads, no third-party Twitter apps, etc, are all very minor annoyances, if you can even call them that, to the majority of users. So while Twitter's new move is certainly frustrating for the developers that helped give them a boost initially, they've certainly got the momentum, brand-recognition, and celebrity engagement to keep them going for a while.