The line between ecosystem partner and competition isn't always so cut and dried, though, as even Instagram shows. So the question is not whether Twitter's going to cut Flipboard off, it's simply when: Will it wait until the new rules kick into place in six months? Or will it go after Flipboard sooner, with the ensuing election news extravaganza coming up? Hrm. On top of that, Flipboard's now more directly competing with the kind of event-oriented social media experience that Twitter is looking to deliver - just check out its curated Olympics page, which is in the same vein as Twitter's. Namely, Flipboard uses your Twitter (and Facebook) network to seed its own (albeit passive) social network and it sells its own advertisements against content that it's pulling either from or via Twitter. But Flipboard, by far the biggest of the bunch - it even signed a deal with the New York Times - does a great many things to annoy Twitter, particularly when taken as a whole. Most of the attention paid to how the Twitter rule changes will affect "social reading" apps like Flipboard, Prismatic and Zite has focused on how these apps violate Twitter Display Guidelines Requirements - things like "tweets that are grouped together into a timeline should not be rendered with non-Twitter content" and that "no other social or 3rd party actions may be attached to a Tweet." Which is true - these apps will have to change the way they display Twitter content to continue to have access to it. Which is also one of the core reasons it's another (very) safe bet that Flipboard will also lose Twitter access soon.
The hit list app update#
Update 7:33PM: Tumblr confirms Twitter cut off its access to users' friend list.) It's not clear who cut the cord, or precisely when though I suspect it's since the piece was published. ( Update 5PM EST: Tumblr's Twitter connection has disappeared since the above screencap was taken last night.
This is data that Twitter does not want it to have, particularly as they've effectively both become media companies. Currently, when you sign up, Tumblr offers to poke through who you're following on Twitter, giving it access to your follow and interest data. It's a (very) safe bet that Tumblr - essentially a rival social network-turned-media company - is next to lose access to Twitter. It cut off LinkedIn because Twitter got nothing out of having its content displayed there and it cut off Instagram because it didn't want the now-Facebook-owned service to have access to Twitter's invaluable follow and interest graphs. While Twitter started warning makers of client applications like Tweetbot, Echofon and Twitterific well over a year ago not to build those kind of apps (with the warnings getting more stern over time), one of the first practical indications that a newly self-confident Twitter was stretching its muscles and not afraid to kick people in the face in the process was when it cut off access to LinkedIn, followed by Instagram. So, it's sort of easy for an app or service to find itself suddenly competing with Twitter.
0 kommentar(er)
