[sitharus]

I still can't understand Twitter's strategy. The sharing of content is what made it popular, isolating "their" content will drive it to celebrity watchers.

I guess advertisers understand publish/subscribe better than social interaction.

[joeblau]

Twitter's Strategy: Step 1 - Standardize message format and control access points for consumption of Twitter content enabling easier ad unit injection into the Twitter stream. Step 2 - ?? Step 3 - Profit.

[dredmorbius]

Step 2 is apparently "enrage existing userbase and partner ecosystem".

[joeblau]

Yeah, app developers definitely got the worst of it. I haven't seen many articles where users have complained though.

[dredmorbius]

As a very occasional visitor to the site, with no account, I've found the changes discourage my casual exploration of the service. Mnay actions lead to a sign-up / registration page. Much like G+ on Android.

[theatrus2]

Users were basically unaffected by the changes. Now when they're mucking with the clients (like the iPad app), its different.

[jeffwidman]

on LinkedIn, twitter couldn't control the inventory, so they couldn't monetize the content.

It was their tradeoff of reducing usage while users are on LI, while hopefully increasing consumption on their own site from those users.

It's certainly a gamble, since I'd argue that LI was more a source of new twitter users rather than siphoning off views from already loyal twitter users.

The other possible threat in Twitter's head might have been LI bootstrapping their newsfeed off Twitter (which they'd mostly been doing) and then growing it large enough to actively compete with Twitter.