Former Lead Developer Bitch Slaps Twitter, Calls It An “Ad Company”

Former Twitter lead developer Alex Payne has come out swinging against his former company, all but accusing it of selling out by referring to it as an “ad company.”

Payne made the comments in an interview with 5by5’s Dan Benjamin while discussing Twitter’s ever developing business model.

“The move toward making advertising a core part of the business makes a lot of sense for the company’s future and profitability, but from my perspective, that’s one of the things that let me know that it was time for me to leave … because I wasn’t interested in working for an ad company. For a long time, the promise at Twitter was that we were going to look at different ways of making money, and to some degree I feel that hasn’t happened.”

Payne is well known as an idealist, so the apparent cynicism isn’t surprising, but the comments to underly the difference between the previous rhetoric from Twitter about how they would be doing things differently, and what they are currently doing.

Conversely, Twitter’s shift to an “ad company” is a good one for a company that for far too long apparently ignored the need to make money from its free service. While many would disagree with its handling of third party developers (and other ad companies for that matter,) a revenue positive Twitter will be a company that sticks around for the long term, and delivers a better service to its millions of users.

(h/t: Mashable / Image: Robert Scoble)