Dalton Caldwell:
Perhaps you think that Twitter today is a really cool and powerful company. Well, it is. But that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been much, much more. I believe an API-centric Twitter could have enabled an ecosystem far more powerful than what Facebook is today. Perhaps you think that the API-centric model would have never worked, and that if the ad guys wouldn’t have won, Twitter would not be alive today. Maybe. But is the service we think of as Twitter today really the Twitter from a few years ago living up to its full potential?
Pretty damming. I’m not quite as bearish on Twitter; I suspect that too much API muzzling will deliver a significant enough backlash that the company will reverse course. Either way, it’s unquestionable Twitter is a very different, less progressive company than it was six months ago.