from Hacker News

Twitter is forcing us to drop ability to flattr creators by favoriting tweets

by chinmoy on 4/16/13, 9:43 AM with 80 comments

• by loudin on 4/16/13, 12:54 PM

  It's extremely clear that Twitter is turning its back on the developer community who helped the company reach success. We were the first adopters of Twitter, encouraged our friends to join, and made it mainstream. Now, when we want to build apps on their platform, Twitter tells us they're closed - that they don't want to return the favor.

  So, yeah, I can see how Flattr, a service that revolves completely around a community of people who actually appreciate others for their work, is upset at the company whose notion of "thanks" is a Cease and Desist.

  As developers, we should be alarmed - we shouldn't be blaming people for 'not reading the terms of service' or saying that 'Twitter has the right to do what it wants'. These answers might be technically right, but they don't capture the true feeling of what is right, which is that developers should build apps that enhance Twitter's ecosystem.

  So, that's it for Twitter for me. I only expect Twitter to get worse about their developer policies in the future, and I don't want to be a part of a community that treats developers poorly.

• by kjackson2012 on 4/16/13, 2:16 PM

  In another era, maybe 5+ years ago, any API provider that had such draconian service terms such as Twitter would have been promptly dropped by most API developers.

  Why do people continue to develop to Twitter's API? It's obvious that Twitter doesn't want people to use their API. In my years of developing on top of 3rd party APIs from Microsoft, Oracle, etc, I've never seen such contempt for developers as I see from Twitter and Facebook. Developers should abandon Twitter en masse.

  But they don't. Developers keep using the Twitter API and they keep getting shut down after spending significant time developing their app. Fool me once, shame on them, fool me twice, shame on me.

  I think developers keep doing it because they are still hoping for that one app that will get them acqu-hired by Twitter or Facebook, so that they can become fabulously rich. It's the one big difference between now and 5+ years ago, and especially before the Instagram acquisition.

• by lkrubner on 4/16/13, 12:39 PM

  This might look like a failure for Flattr, but if you compare them with the flood of micro-payment services that sprang up 5 or 6 years ago, 99% of which vanished without a trace, then clearly it marks a kind of success for Flattr that people are still talking about them, and still thinking about their business model. Of all the micro-payment and/or donation sites that tried to make something like this work, Flattr has been the most successful so far. As a point of comparison, look at Kachingle, which so far has failed to gain any traction, and which has attracted more derision (and lawsuits) than praise: http://kachingle.com/

• by babs474 on 4/16/13, 2:50 PM

  I brought this up in the previous twitter api thread, but it is interesting to get more thoughts.

  Perhaps the answer is to stop using apis.

  I developed a reddit extension, and when reddit cut off my api access I was able to crowdsource a datafeed through an inbrowser extension. I'm not saying it applies here, but with some creativity I think some apps could be refactored to use a similar approach.

  It is not a clean or easy technological solution, but it seems like the api route isn't clean or easy politically.

  Imagine if Google tried to get off the ground by using apis to crawl or if Facebook had used approved apis to populate its initial database. They'd be quickly killed, just like what is happening api innovators right now.

• by nicholassmith on 4/16/13, 2:30 PM

  Can anyone remember a few years ago, where it felt like almost twice a week there was a new thing leveraging from Twitter in some way, doing something useful or something novel or something completely terrible? That was great, it created genuine value and drew more users in.

  If you're a developer and you build on Facebook, or Twitter, or any other API, you now need to be ready for them to pull the T&Cs out and ban your ass and kill your project because damnit, we can't extract value from your additions that'll help us effectively monetize our customer base.

  (p.s. flattr looks like a great service and I'm sure they'll find a work around, but they should have known this was on the horizon)

• by raphinou on 4/16/13, 10:27 AM

  Is network effect so strong that Twitter can go so long at to try to destroy its own platform? Or is it the lack of an alternative? Makes me think of Oracle doing the same with Java by trying to extend copyright to APIs.

• by sikhnerd on 4/16/13, 10:48 AM

  How long until twitter rolls out it's own tweet-directed payment service? Maybe they finally found a market-tested monetization strategy.

• by jonahx on 4/16/13, 10:55 AM

  Twitter is a culture, and bringing money into the culture of favoriting and retweeting could change it, possibly for the worse. Twitter has a right to stop that. I'm not saying their intentions are necessarily so pure (probably not), but it's also not out of the question.

• by InternalRun on 4/16/13, 10:24 AM

  Twitters war on developers continues.

• by nnnnni on 4/16/13, 10:26 AM

  Ugh, I guess Twitter wants to be the next MySpace. These companies need to ADAPT if they want to stay relevant.

• by hiddenfeatures on 4/16/13, 10:39 AM

  Interesting... They seem to crack down heavy-handed on companies that offer payment related to twitter. Is this about user experience or is this a harbinger of their upcoming monetization strategy?

• by iliaznk on 4/16/13, 10:27 AM

  More and more Twitter reminds me a fat and ugly beast.

• by JoelMarsh on 4/16/13, 11:20 AM

  Flattr's blog post seems to have a bit of that "not fair!" tone to it, which they - for better or for worse - don't actually have the right to say.

  I can definitely see the argument from Twitter's side, even if I don't agree with it. But more than that: these are Twitter's terms! You can't roll in and start arguing for benefit-of-the-doubt with the people that wrote the terms for their own platform.

  If you build your app on another company's platform to monetize their platform and they decide you can't, you're just falling into a trap you set for yourself. Even if it would be cooler if they allowed it.

• by k-mcgrady on 4/16/13, 11:08 AM

  I haven't used Flattr in a few years so I'm not sure exactly how this feature works. However company's features or businesses being destroyed through failure to read the rules/guidelines set out by the company they are working via is becoming more and more common. If you are developing for iOS, Twitter, Facebook etc. read the rules first. If there is anything that could be interpreted in any way to affect you get clarification.

• by generalseven on 4/16/13, 1:21 PM

  Does anyone have a clear view of Twitter's Terms on commercial use and can clarify it?

  For example, Flattr and Ribbon.co have recently run into trouble, but Chirpify, Amex and Dwolla look like they might have Twitter's blessing.

  Can anyone give a good explanation of how it works?

• by unkoman on 4/16/13, 10:52 AM

  Man this was what made flattr fun to use. O well, at least I can flattr youtube videos.

• by michaelfeathers on 4/16/13, 12:07 PM

  It's even worse for them than that. If they are violating the TOS it is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 18 U.S.C. § 1030. Federal felonies for all involved. :-/

• by ing33k on 4/16/13, 5:32 PM

  that's it , I can finally stop wasting my time on writing an app which obviously will be pulled down due to violation of twitters terms.

• by debt on 4/16/13, 2:57 PM

  twitter doesn't make any money if you use their apis. in the same way google wound down google reader, i think you'll see the same neglect hit the apis. twitter needs developers focusing most of their attention on products that make money.

• by chrisvineup on 4/16/13, 10:32 AM

  They are going to pivot to compete with Spotify next :D

• by lawl on 4/16/13, 11:12 AM

  time to get an app.net invite and abandon twitter i guess. At least for me.

• by jacques_chester on 4/16/13, 11:26 AM

  I am currently in the process of patenting a technology for a business which I suppose will indirectly compete with Flattr.

  To be quite honest, I admire how far they've gotten. Of the various micropayment and microtipping ventures, they've been able to steadily plug away. I gave them about as much odds of success as the many other companies that have come and gone. (How this bodes for my own ambitions is left as an exercise for the reader).

  Naturally, I think that their model has critical economic and technical flaws that put me in a better position. But they're in the market making money and I'm on HN being all hand-wavy and mysterious (sorry: pre-patent secrecy).

  If I could give them one piece of advice -- and it goes for everyone who's had a crack at this -- 10% isn't enough. The incidence of the micropayment/tipping service's share doesn't fall on the user, it falls on the websites. So you might as well pick a sustainable rate, rather than hobble your cashflow.

• by paulhauggis on 4/16/13, 1:18 PM

  I don't feel sorry for Flattr. The creator, Peter Sunde, one of the creators of The Pirate Bay, not only facilitates the sharing of content against the wishes of many of the owners, but charges 10% to use Flattr.

  If Flattr was really all about helping others, the fee would be much less.

  I still remember when he spoke at a conference and he talked about how everything should be shared/free. It seems he's not being very honest with us.

  With the amount of advertising on TPB (and traffic), I know he was making a profit (and paying his salary).

  Why should he get to profit on the backs of hard-working developers and musicians and at the same time saying they shouldn't be able to earn a living?