Platform-Business on Ryan Orban

Twitter's Descent into the Extractive — DHH / 37signals

me@ryanorban.com (Ryan Orban) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of 37signals) wrote this essay in November 2012 as Twitter was systematically closing off its ecosystem. Twitter had just introduced restrictive API guidelines that capped third-party client user counts, cut off competitors from the Twitter firehose, and made clear that the open platform era was ending.

Twitter Is Pivoting — Dalton Caldwell

me@ryanorban.com (Ryan Orban) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

Dalton Caldwell wrote this essay as the founder of App.net — which he had launched specifically because Twitter had made clear it was pivoting away from being a developer platform. His inside view is more specific than outside critics’: Twitter was not becoming a media company, it had decided to become one, and every API restriction followed from that strategic choice.