Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: January 21, 2009
Tags : Twitter
The tech blogosphere is in a flutter over a decision by Twitter to limit authorized requests to the Twitter API to 20,000 per hour. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, what it means is that third party tools, for example SocialToo, can only interact with Twitter (for lack of a better term) 20,000 times an hour.
Now that might seem a lot, but considering millions access Twitter through third party tools, it’s not even remotely large. For example, a desktop client might access Twitter every 3 minutes, that’s 20 times an hour. If you’ve got only 1,000 users, that’s 20,000 requests. It’s not a great example, but it works for visualization; strangely the limit is per IP address, so desktop clients won’t be affected, only third party tools that interact with the data like SocialToo and Qwitter are. We’re not sure about FriendFeed at this stage.
The real question though is why, or more precisely why now?
From the outside it would appear that Twitter is cutting off some of the hands that feed it. This isn’t the first time Twitter has restricted third party access, and like last time the net result will likely be services shutting down.
Twitter pleads service demands and costs, which is not unreasonable, although likewise they’re not short of money to sustain it, even if they are short on revenue (which is none).
But at the same time we know that Twitter is developing revenue making services.
What if some of these services offered similar features to those being blocked by this decision?
It’s not inconceivable that Twitter might offer a “premium” account along the lines of what Flickr offers, say $50 for two years. As part of that account, you might get similar services to what is offered by Qwitter and SocialToo, services I might add that are both logical extensions to Twitter, and perhaps long overdue.
Twitter’s problem though is that 3rd party service providers offering this functionality for free would undercut a premium offering along the same lines.
Truth be told though they are fully within their rights to do what they have done. The insanity is that VC’s are investing in companies that rely on Twitter API access to begin with. It’s not a solid base from which to build a business.
Louis Gray has more on the take from SocialToo’s perspective.
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Jan 21, 2009
So, does this mean that TweetDeck may not be a viable tool anymore? If so, then I'm very angry.
Jan 21, 2009
interesting angle Duncan … I think a lot of ppl would indeed pay a monthly/annual fee for premium Twitter services, especially with so many using it more or less as a marketing/branding tool. Limiting what the free apps can do would be a logical move to get to a place where they can charge people.
Jan 22, 2009
Consider this though Dunc:
Other startups have built on Twitter and are building business models around Twitter's resources. Perhaps they want Qwitter and TweetScan and all these other tools to pay for the interface or requests above 20,000. It would make sense. Commercially I think it's a good place to start monetisation. Why should twitter bear the burden for all these other tools that basically build on Twitter's success?
Thanks for the angle, I never would have thought it.
Jan 22, 2009
Why would you multiply the number of requests per hour with the number of friends like you did in your example? 20 requests is still 20 requests with a single batch of responses back, no matter how many individual people responded during that time. Not everyone is going to update every time either.
You can't use desktop clients as an example and then in your next sentence say it doesn't apply to them.
Jan 22, 2009
If Twitter starts charging for API throughput, especially if it decides on a corporate paying model for large services, will that then mean those services will also field pay-to-use models (and hasten to do so?) ?
Jan 22, 2009
If Twitter begins a monetization model based around API throughput, will this mean that extension services – especially large ones – will find themselves hastening to develop their own monetization plans? What sort of large-scale change could it force?
Jan 22, 2009
i think a lot of people wouldn't pay for twitter, no matter what the cost/features are.
Jan 22, 2009
Absolutely. I simply don't get the business model relying on free services. After all nothing is really free and more so in today's market conditions.
Jan 22, 2009
Those people would probably be the same ones who kick the proverbial ass out of it.
I don't think they would ever charge for the basic twitter service, but it all depends on how 'premium' is defined (or what services would fall into that category).