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by ascagnel_ 1251 days ago
- Twitter could have turned the apps into a revenue opportunity (gate API access behind the paid Blue service for users, charge developers per user for API access)

- Twitter apps had the reputation at one point of being “UI playgrounds” — a good place for designers to experiment with different ideas around presentation of the feed; while Twitter didn’t directly benefit from it, these apps provided a massive amount of design iteration that enabled Twitter to steal the best ideas
1 comments
sundaeofshock 1251 days ago
Putting the API behind Twitter blue might not have worked. The paid badge has become a mark of derision amongst a portion of the user base.
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ascagnel_ 1251 days ago
It would go a long way towards making such a service acceptable ("I'm only paying for Blue for Tweetbot!"). The other option would be to charge developers for per-user access to the API, which developers could build into subscription payments (eg: Twitter could have charged Tapbots $2/user/month for access, so Tweetbot would have to charge their users $31+/year on iOS).
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