[j42]

While not stated eloquently, I do think there's some truth in that.

1. Open API's, good documentation and community engagement goes a long way in establishing developer trust. I don't believe developer trust is correlated significantly with revenue (directly), but it's absolutely correlated with acquisition. I'd argue that Angular or React were partially successful because of the stickiness of their communities, and that's a powerful self-perpetuating force.

2. Monetization is in the queries. Facebook and Google know this. Throwing aside all of their auxiliary services, emerging markets, hardware, et al... between 70-90% of their respective revenue is from direct advertising. If there's a way to scale or "ramp" their revenue model, this would be the portion to focus on.

[inthewoods]

Monetization of the queries doesn't appear to be a significant revenue opportunity for either Google or Facebook - why would this be different for Twitter? Not that this can't be a revenue source, but how big is it?

An alternative: I agree with everyone that they should have turned the APIs back on - they just should have made it mandatory to carry advertising as part of the feeds in order to access the feeds. They could have also layered on federated advertising for anyone consuming the API - meaning, allow those folks to show their own advertising in-stream. They simply pay Twitter a cut. Both of these may have helped them both grow the audience and advertising at the same time.

[j42]

I'm sorry but I'm not quite sure what you mean by this?

In 2011, 96% of Google's revenue was from AdWords -- in recent years that has lowered slightly due to their diversification and cloud services, but it's still at least a 70% share of their gross revenues.

Facebook is currently ~80%.

The money is in the ads.

[inthewoods]

You and I agree.

The original poster is talking about queries in a difference sense than a Google query - he's referring to it as an API call in a "firehose" sense - so I'm buying access to the Twitter data for my application. I'm suggesting that the number of people who will pay for those API calls is limited.

But no doubt that money is in the ads - that's why I suggested that they should turn the API back on, but require clients to display the ads. Sadly, I think this opportunity is gone as they have killed their developer ecosystem.

[j42]

I'm the original poster, and I was talking about ads, not metered queries. :)

[edit] and perhaps that was a poor choice of words. as a developer of high-volume low-latency exchange feeds, "query" has a bit of a different meaning to me.

[inthewoods]

Nope - the misinterpretation is my end - my bad. Re-reading your original I think we're on the same page. I think they need to reopen their API (if it isn't too late) and then just send ads as part of that package to clients and require them to display them.

[kordless]

Monetization of the queries isn't a significant revenue opportunity because of scaling payment issues. Solve that, and you solve getting paid for doing something you are good at, which is throwing millions of statuses at millions of users.

[inthewoods]

I'm not getting why you think this data is so valuable or who you think the audience is - are you suggesting that millions of people would pay for the feed and it is just a problem of being able to pay?

[kordless]

The data is valuable only if someone has fair access to it. What an individual or a thousand may do with that data is an unknown and that is the real opportunity here, not the promise of a million subscribers paying you a dollar each. Twitter took that unknown, turned it off, and tried to own all the opportunity and all the answers. They did this because they IPO'd and then the need by investors to know what's going to happen took over even more than before. If there were answers to be had here, they'd already be doing it. I'm suggesting a move back to innovation, which is where they belong.

The desire by some individuals to make insane amounts of money on an idea are directly responsible for a massive SUCK experience for the end users of the software because those users are then forced to use the software in a way that makes the revenue predictable. I used to love to use Twitter because of all the wide variety of apps and things I could do with it with code. Now it's just unusable and dying. I would pay to make that different, but there isn't anything they offer that's worth my time and effort, so I'll go elsewhere.

[inthewoods]

"The data is valuable only if someone has fair access to it. What an individual or a thousand may do with that data is an unknown and that is the real opportunity here, not the promise of a million subscribers paying you a dollar each."

Why is the data only valuable if someone has fair access to it? Right now, basically anyone can go license the Twitter data and have access to the full firehose. And I don't know how you know if the data is real opportunity here (vs. advertising).

"The desire by some individuals to make insane amounts of money on an idea are directly responsible for a massive SUCK experience for the end users of the software because those users are then forced to use the software in a way that makes the revenue predictable. I used to love to use Twitter because of all the wide variety of apps and things I could do with it with code. Now it's just unusable and dying. I would pay to make that different, but there isn't anything they offer that's worth my time and effort, so I'll go elsewhere."

Are you offering a better path for Twitter and their shareholders, or are you offering a path that feels better, but may have a much lesser outcome for those parties? If so, why would they take it?

And while I agree with you that Twitter is dying, it's not unusable, it's just not usable in the way that you want to use it.

[kordless]

Trust initially makes you decide to use something (marketing) and trust also makes decide to stay with it (loyalty). Marketing itself is mostly related to raising interest, but it frequently 'hacks' trust by using biases to establish quick and cheap trust with consumers. If a company's product is trustworthy (real trust, not biased trust) then the loyalty becomes strong with the customer. Companies who acquire other companies regularly have identified their bad habits of using too much marketing to try to get more customers and instead focus on buying loyalty through an acquisition.

[kelseydh]

Facebook's token user API system has now created the billion dollar juggernaut that is Tinder. That app is now irrevocably linked to Facebook.

You are completely right, there is a huge strategic reason for promoting OAuth API's as a large company.