Firstly apologies if you’re bored with the hysteria surrounding twitter’s v1.1 api announcement, I too had quite enough the other day. I promise to:
- Keep this post short
- Say something I’ve not seen elsewhere
The announcement in two parts
Twitter doesn’t want you
- Creating basic twitter clients which replicate the twitter web or mobile apps
Twitter is quite happy for you to
- Create analytics products on top of twitter data
- Create ‘Enterprise clients’
So ultimately your ‘Learning to use an API 101′ project to create a twitter client won’t be allowed to be released as a product. But if you’re creating an enterprise client, Twitter is now saying that’s fine. This is something I don’t believe they’ve made clear in the past. Companies like Pluggio now probably have a clearer future than ever before.
Likewise, if you’re building on the data twitter captures you’re equally well supported by this announcement.
Why build on twitter’s platform now?
Firstly, if you have an idea for a new twitter client which will look nicer or allow people to scroll with the volume controls on android because you missed the class which explained that was a terrible idea. Don’t. You’re probably very talented and should spend your efforts elsewhere.
If you do have another idea though, be it analyticsy or enterprisey, now could be the best ever time to go for it. Consistent advice in investing (and startups are an investment, if not of money then certainly your time) is to zig when everyone else zags. With all the foaming at the mouth pouring all sorts of FUD into the water, your competition right now will be a lot less. Some seem to have realised all isn’t bad with the announcement, so there are still a few out there to compete with. But, you could steal a head start on others who may be needlessly scared away by the tidal wave of missing the point out there.
