Amarjit Singh

Twitter changed the game with their new rules that significantly limit the usage of their API. Much has been written about that but nobody actually asked some very important questions that Im curious about. Before publishing them here I sent these questions to top technical bloggers and journalists, and they didnt seem to be interested at all (not even a reply). But I still dont believe that the questions are irrelevant, so here they are. If twitter doesn't answer them, at least I hope to get some most likely answers in the comments: 1. Why do you need these limitations? We all assume that its because of your business model, and we are totally fine with you making money, but how is imposing these limitations helping? If you want to display ads, cant you simply send the ads with the API, and cut API access for those filtering the ads? Or, alternatively, make the API paid (pay-per-usage) this worked for Google. Or a hybrid solution if you are a displaying tweets in real time, pay, otherwise use it for free. 2. Why the display guidelines? Whats the benefit of a unified display for you and for the users? Users so far have been perfectly aware that they are reading and interacting with tweets even if the tweets are formatted differently. Furthermore youve been changing twitter.com a lot in the past. Imposing a unified look will mean either that you wont change anything in the future, or that API clients will have to make changes every now and then. 3. Will you kill TweetDeck? It is a traditional client which currently violates a lot of the new rules. 4. Have you considered that browser add-ons and smartphone apps can still do whatever they want with tweets and you cant do anything about it? A browser add-on can modify the look, can append additional actions, etc, without using the API. Likewise, a mobile app can have an embedded browser and modify the DOM. Existing clients may move in that direction and you wont be able to enforce your rules. It will just be less convenient for the developers . 5. Why are you blocking additional actions for tweets? The rules say that you cant have any addition action attached to a tweet. But these are options that many users like and want - translate a foreign tweet, schedule a retweet, reshare the tweet to other networks, email a tweet, read-it-later, and more. Why are you are effectively killing a lot of useful functionality? How does that contribute to your business goals? 6. Did you know that the new rules will cause a lot of collateral damage and in what way is this justified? You may have wanted to kill traditional clients only, but so far the integration with instagram, tumblr, linkedin, ifttt (and more) has been broken (some of these are not necessarily due to the changes themselves, but to youroverall intention to more strictly enforce rules) 7. Why do you say that your users own their content, but you dont allow them to have it distributed to other channels (the reason linkedin and ifttt dropped twitter support)? They can still do that by manually pasting it to all these channels, but why making it harder for them? 8. Do you know that your apps and web client are not that good? I cant use the twitter app for android because it is slow and gets stuck all the time, so I use TweetDeck. Also, your clients lack a lot of little things that make me choose other clients. 9. Why arent you answering questions of developers (mine, at least)? I emailed every relevant email address I found and also asked at the discussion forum. After my initial rage against the new rules I decided to approach the issue in a more civilized manner and asked you how exactly can I change my service to conform to your rules. But no answer for a month and a half now. Posted by:Bozhidar Bozhanov

Suresh Raina and his 'nephew' were trending on Twitter on Friday. A tweet from his account ridiculed Pakistan cricket team but he later said that it was written and sent by his nephew. The tweet was sent after Pakistan were beaten by Sri Lanka in Colombo on Thursday. A tweet on Raina's page said: Ek do din late gaye ghar !!!! Woh bhi besharam ki tarah Gaye... Bye bye Pakistan!!!!