• Twitter’s decision to kick-off third party clients is classic Musk, signaling the company’s focus on its business model going forward.
• The outage was intentional, and speculation suggests it was to drive ad revenue.
• Twitter’s history with 3rd-party apps has been tumultuous, with the company needing to control the user experience to monetize via advertising.
• Bill Gross attempted to build a competing network of clients to monetize independently, leading to Twitter kicking off several of his clients.
• The 2012 decision to kill the 3rd party API made sense for Twitter to pursue its advertising business model.
• Twitter leadership has been historically weak and averse to conflict, leading to a situation where 3rd-party Twitter clients were allowed to exist and add up to 100,000 new users.
• Elon Musk’s decision to cut off 3rd-party clients was a business decision that should have been made a decade ago, but was executed in the worst way possible.
• The move may be a signal that Twitter Blue has already been deemed a failure.
• The Twitter Files reveal that Twitter was very much enmeshed with the federal government in terms of controlling speech on Twitter.
• Matt Taibbi was given access to the Twitter Files, but had to agree to certain conditions, such as publishing on Twitter and attributing the sources as “Sources at Twitter”.
• The decision to publish the Twitter Files on Twitter blunted their impact substantially, as Twitter’s power is in its orchestration of consent.
• The move may be an attempt to capture the value of content directly on Twitter, as the more essential Twitter is, the more advertisers will have no choice but to be on Twitter.
Published January 16, 2023. Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post [Twitter Kills Third-Party Clients, Twitter’s Tortured History With 3rd-Party Apps, The Twitter Files Business Model]
