[cercatrova]

> From a business perspective, you don't want to alienate developers who work to build your ecosystem.

This does not follow, in Twitter's case. If Twitter's API made them money, they wouldn't have shut it down, but it's the exact opposite, it costs them money while providing no monetary benefit. So in this case, from the business perspective, it is correct to start charging for it.

Now they could spend 3 months but with debt service payments of a billion dollars a year, I highly doubt that they have the patience to wait that long.

[TheOtherHobbes]

It provides no direct income.

But it provide monetary benefits by attracting and keeping users, which encourages ad spend.

Or at least it used to, until the big advertisers were driven away.

If someone is trying to run a business and doesn't understand how indirect income works they might want to consider something less challenging.

What this actually does is remove API access from small startups, solo developers, and other innovators, and reserves it for corporations.

[cercatrova]

The number of users kept via the API is not as high as people might think, so I would actually agree that if that's the case, then Musk correctly shut off the API for people who weren't bringing in more benefits than the costs they were incurring.

[zpeti]

Frankly the guy designed rockets that landed for the first time ever so I think he probably has the brain capacity to make this calculation.

He might not be great at decisions where people and politics are involved, but this isn’t one of those decisions. But some people here on HN really want to believe he’s an idiot, which he’s not.

[cycomanic]

Can we please stop saying that the CEO of a company did anything but lead a company (not to downplay the difficulty of leading a company). Musk certainly did not design rockets that land themselves. I highly doubt that he could even write down (let alone solve) the main important equations when asked. It's funny how some execs are attributed with doing everything (Jobs and Musk are the main ones), while nobody would say Adani dug up coal from the ground.

[zpeti]

Watching even 1 video of an everyday astronaut interview with Musk makes it completely obvious you are completely wrong. And so do tonnes of testimonials on quora from spacex employees.

Musk is the chief engineer of spacex rockets. He's not just a CEO.

Do a little research before making comments like this.

[johannes1234321]

Twitter API is what publishers use to bring content onto Twitter. That content is a reason why other users visit Twitter. With that content gone, Twitter is a lot less attractive to many.

Will be interesting to observe ... will publishers pay? Will users enjoy without those?

[enkid]

The gp comment is talking about the indirect benefits of having an API, which is a large number of free developers and researchers help you improve your product at a pretty low cost (compared to if you paid them directly