2024 Social Media Vibe Check

About a year ago, I wrote about the state of things at Twitter. It’s gone worse than I could have imagined, although I won’t cover that here. There are a zillion think pieces on that Musk has done to that company and what it means for Twitter, social media, and our overall discourse. I’ll leave […]

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Twitter and 3rd Party Apps

From Mitchell Clark, the Verge:

Elon Musk just decided to throw all of that away. Twitter has abruptly cut itself off from that stream of ideas — the stream that produced its apps, some of its most popular features, and much of its core identity. Even if he backtracks, why would developers spend their best ideas on a company that’s burned them so badly?

Twitter was always unique in that they are one of the only social media platforms to allow 3rd-party clients to essentially re-create the entire platform’s experience. Looking back at how much those early apps made the experience what it is today is really worth celebrating, even if we knew it wouldn’t last forever. Given the fact that they never were able to push ads into those timelines, it’s no wonder that eventually they would shut Twitterrific, Tweetbot and others down.

Twitter is shutting down Fleets, its expiring tweets feature

From The Verge:

Twitter’s decision to axe Fleets is not just an admission that the feature didn’t work, but that the company still hasn’t figured out how to get people tweeting more. For years, Twitter has struggled to get new users to post regularly and not just consume other people’s tweets. Fleets was its shot at using Stories, the popular social media format invented by Snapchat and further popularized by Instagram, to lower the pressure around tweeting.

I think a better way to have created auto-expiring Tweets is to simply show them inline with some sort of designation that they are ephemeral. Even better, make expiring Tweets the default and find a way to allow users to “pin” tweets to their timeline.

I currently use Jumbo to auto-delete my Tweets after a few months and would love that feature to be baked in by default.

Twitter co-founder Ev Williams wants developers to come back

Twitter co-founder Ev Williams wants developers to come back:

Williams also suggested that it was time for Twitter to look for new ways to connect with software developers and to take another stab at making Twitter a platform. Twitter  famously went to war with developers several years ago when it restricted developers’ access to the API that allowed developers to grab Twitter data for their own use.

This is a very good thing if it actually comes to pass.  While I like what Twitter has been doing lately with their native iOS app, their Mac and iPad apps are horribly out of date.  I’m a Tweetbot user on the Mac and waffle between Tweetbot and Twitterrific on iOS, but would love to see even more innovation in the Twitter app space.  Right now, developers’ hands are tied.