[kbenson]

So? If they want all these special access cases handled through Gnip, whether they are discounted or free, that's their call. Just because it's through the commercial arm doesn't mean they would be incapable of handling special cases.

In any case, it's all speculation, there was never a dialogue, and the HN title as it current stands is probably inflaming this more than it should be. Their access was not shut down (and the blog post's title and wording does does not say it is shut down, but that they believe they will be shut down). An email was sent, it was poorly worded, and the recipient overreacted (or at least prematurely reacted). The responsible thing to do would have been to contact Twitter or the sender and discuss the needs and goals of the project, and see what they could offer.

Immediately writing a public blog post is not negotiating in good faith.

[njs12345]

> Immediately writing a public blog post is not negotiating in good faith.

Yet this seems to have been quite effective, given that the head of Developer Relations at Twitter is replying to this story on HN..

[kbenson]

I don't question that. Yet doing things based purely on their effectiveness for your goals without any regard to the consequences for other parties is semi-sociopathic behavior, which is why it's frowned upon. Whether something is effective or not should not be the only metric by which we decide whether it's the action we should take.

[ploxiln]

A small-time developer asking a big company to be reasonable practically never works. Likely first response is from a low-paid customer support person who has no idea what you're talking about, likely second response is from an aggressive business or law type in the company.

Public shaming on twitter+blog is 50/50. It often gets the attention of an engineer and sometimes even a founder, and when it does the response is often reasonable. Why would you ever try anything else?

I've had a crazy technical issue with AWS that our account representative proved useless for about but a tweet got it fixed. Also see news articles about people suffering the most ridiculous treatment from comcast/timewarner/verizon/at&t until they get in the news and everything is finally sorted out. This is a totally standard thing you should already be familiar with. The problem is that these big companies get too many queries from crazies and people who have no idea what they're doing, they're inundated with stupid support requests. So a legitimate support request will never be noticed by anyone who knows anything. So you need a sort of public vetting process. You need the "shaming" part to express the priority in large companies where business people have all the power.

I'm not sure there's a better way, that's just how it is.

[threeseed]

Going public is incredibly short sighted and almost never effective. People are people and turning a potentially innocuous situation into "us versus them" just makes them less likely to want to help you.

[pmontra]

I got a problem with logging into a service a couple of weeks ago. I sent them mail, no answers. I wrote on their Facebook page a few days later (no harsh words). They called me home in a couple of hours and we fixed the problem on the spot. I wrote again on fb to thank them.

Going public means getting in front of people that care more about customers or has more time to do so. It feels a little like skipping the line though.

[kbenson]

The difference here is that you attempted normal contact first, and waited for a reply. If everyone immediately defaulted to publicizing their problems with their relationships with companies, it would be both more annoying for everyone and less effective. The importance they place on your publicly aired problems is relative to how many of those problems they see and the expected negative impact. A thousand people complaining about your service daily will not receive the same attention and treatment as when there's a single person complaining.

[smackfu]

It's just getting to the point where emailing a company through the normal support channels is just a joke. Their email queue is days long, while their Twitter queue is minutes.

[kbenson]

What needs to happen, and probably has little chance of happening, is for people to always mention how understaffed the support at the company in question must be. These companies are under-staffing their support and it's contributing to the situation where things often need to be publicly escalated before they get the attention they need. Making support and customer service part of their reputation will go a long way towards solving that. There's really no excuse for support as atrocious as some companies have become known for. Sure, some of the products are free, but at the same time they are able to monetize the aggregate of all that free use, so there's really no excuse, since the free use and their revenues are intrinsically linked.

[smackfu]

It makes them more likely to help you and less likely to do it happily. Depends on circumstances whether that is better for you.

[mgalka]

I think the email goes further than poorly worded. It says pretty clearly that access will be cut off, gives no suggestion that there could be a negotiation.

[kbenson]

The email ends with If you have questions, please reply to this email and we will be in touch to discuss.

I think it boils down to this, if the email said "Hey, we noticed you have special access, and we are trying to clean those up. You should either use the regular API with rate limits or our commercial offerings. Let me know if you have any questions." then I think the appropriate first step would be to contact Twitter and explain your situation. Since the actual letter contains that and just more information about possible options, I don't see why it should be viewed any differently.

[ncallaway]

I think you're unfairly abridging the e-mail that was sent. I think a more representative abridged e-mail would be:

> Hey, we noticed you have special access, and we are trying to clean those up. You should either use the regular API with rate limits or our commercial offerings. Your special access will be terminated on Thursday, April 21st. Let me know if you have any questions.

On receiving an e-mail of that nature, I would very likely let my audience know that I was shutting down the service on Thursday, April 21st just as the blog post author did.

I would not assume "Let me know if you have questions" meant "Let me know if you'd like to clarify your situation and request an exemption from this policy". I would assume it meant I could inquire about the details and process of the shutdown, or ask questions about the Gnip service or other options that they discussed in the e-mail.

[kbenson]

See, my first action if I was running a free and open source service that used the API free would be to immediately respond and say, "Hey, I had free access because I'm running an open source project that uses this and it provides a free service. Is there no option for me to continue that in some way? If not, I'll have to shut down." Quick, simple, gets to the heart of the matter, and provides the department responsible at Twitter with the information most relevant to possibly letting me continue with free access.

Immediately going public can backfire, depending on the specifics of your case. Now there are possibly competing interests at play, the public pressure to let them continue, and possibly some anger over at Twitter for not being given the smallest benefit of a doubt (when their project works because of the good grace your company exhibited in the first place) or even asked before playing hardball. If I was the person responsible for making the call at Twitter, I would probably acquiesce, but I would want to tell this person to go get bent.

[wiseleo]

A form letter saying "Contact us if you have any questions" politely implies "We don't really want to hear your questions and no exceptions will be granted".

If they don't wish to communicate that message, the message should end with at the very least something like "We don't want to terminate a popular service in error, so please contact us today to tell us more about it."

[endemic]

I think it's entirely reasonable, given Twitter's history in this area, to read the email as a shutdown notice.

[exolymph]

This is a key point -- Twitter doesn't have credibility when it comes to supporting independent developers.

[ZenPsycho]

> Immediately writing a public blog post is not negotiating in good faith.

Did everyone miss this part of the blog post?

> I’ve replied to Twitter asking for an exception, but I honestly don’t expect to receive one—and even if I were to, it wouldn’t help other developers who I believe deserve to get the same level of opportunity as me.

[kbenson]

That doesn't really make a difference to my point if it's done prior to getting, or waiting an acceptable time period for, a response.