The Middle - A Followup

Speaking of being in the middle, check out Ben Thompson's post Twitter and What Might Have Been on his Stratechery blog. Money shot:

This was the context for the aforementioned post: advertising works best at scale but 3rd-party apps were peeling away too much of Twitter’s audience. That is why the company made such a big mistake: they didn’t kill 3rd-party apps completely. (my emphasis)

...

The funny/sad thing about this entire episode is that Twitter was clearly trying to bend over backwards for its 3rd-party developers: it was strategically stupid and financially unwise to let them continue to exist, but Twitter left this massive loophole open that limited growth but didn’t kill successful apps like Twitterrific or Tweetbot. And yet, the company was pilloried and tarred with a reputation for being especially unfriendly to developers, a reputation that strongly persists to this day.

Twitter clearly had a strategic direction they wanted to follow, yet muddled it up by still allowing some access to third-party apps.

Twitter got caught in the middle.

By the way, if you aren't a regular reader of Stratechery, you should be - it's chock full of insightful analysis and strategic thinking. I also subscribe to his Daily Update, and it's worth the investment.