Twitter Goes After Its Biggest Allies

In a blog post, Twitter signaled it has made significant changes to its API that have the potential to considerably harm and diminish the function of third-party clients and applications.

Although Twitter has been moving in this direction for some time, and therefore these actions can’t come as a complete surprise, the changes reveal Twitter’s platform philosophy: they want to be more like Apple, with complete authoritarian control over the platform and, critically, its monetization, than like Microsoft or Google, with completely open platforms accompanied by related monetization opportunities. It’s all about the money.

Although it’s certainly premature to predict problems for Twitter, this change creates the biggest opportunity for platform providers to compete with Twitter. Brands and solution providers need to more strongly prioritize competing platforms, including Facebook, Pinterest, and perhaps an evolving Google. Emerging platforms like App.net also merit attention.