Developers cower in fear, or anger, as news of twitter cracking down on third party apps - mostly used by geeks and power users, that hitch on its platform is gaining traction.
And the departure of Mike Mccue, CEO of the most-beloved app Flipboard, which by the way does a good job of prettifying those usually bland tweets, from Twitter's board did nothing to lessen those fears.
To the
— Mike McCue (@mmccue) August 1, 2012@twitter team: it was amazing to be part of the board. You're truly changing the world. Thanks@ev@jack@dick for the opportunity.
Is this Twitter really doubling down on consistency or is this them trying to double the profits?
Well, it looks like a little bit of both.
They are aiming to provide a consistent experience across all their supported apps starting with Cards, a novel way of displaying data that'll be attractive to users ala Flipboard and advertisers as well, hence, getting them that pile of cash that may justify their venture-backing under huge valuations.
Though there was a study which says that mainstream users won't be affected by this impending fallout, we can't rule the geeks out. Because when geeks are unhappy, bad stuff tends to happen. I'm sure Jack (cool guy!) and Dick (not so cool) wouldn't like that.
P.S. Twitter should spend a little cash, okay, maybe not so little, too late for that, and buy Flipboard. I'm sure good things will come out of it. Oh, and while were at it, buy Tweetbot as well. They're doing a better job than you guys.