But couldn't part of the potential be that a 3rd party developer ecosystem that feels healthy and secure will focus on providing added value for users, thereby encouraging more users? More developers? More revenue? And assumedly proving the developers worth to the company as being greater than just their $100/year (or whatever it ends up being)? I'm not saying that all parties are always going to get along like a friendly gang-bang, but I don't think it is as simple as 'The developers still make up a minority of the user revenue.'
A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.
I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)
OK fair enough. But I could have sworn I was just replying directly to something you said in your above comment. And I don't think I took it too far out of context. :)
> A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.
Agreed. But what would you think the split would be on tide shifting regarding 3rd party development due to advertisers vs. 'normal people' signing up? I'd still bet on the former being the more pressing issue.
> I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)
For me personally, I'm more excited about losing the advertisers. But now that you mention it, maybe losing (at least for a while) the mediocre users you speak of is just an added bonus. :P
Of course, not I or anyone else knows how App.net is going to turn out at this point, but I'm approaching it with curiosity at this stage, I don't yet see a reson to add morbidity.
