Newly reappointed CEO Jack Dorsey took the stage today during Twitter’s second annual developer conference to offer an apology for the way his company has treated developers over the years.
In his speech, Dorsey said that somewhere along the line, Twitter’s relationship got complicated, confusing and unpredictable (that’s putting it lightly). He added that the company wants to reset its relationship with developers and make sure they are learning, listening and rebooting.
Twitter’s feud with the very developers that helped make it what it is today has been well-documented. What started out as an amicable relationship quickly turned sour as Twitter began restricting and blocking access to certain services.
As The Guardian reminds us, Tumblr joined LinkedIn and Instagram in 2012 as services that Twitter blocked from letting its users search for their friends on other social networks.
Twitter implemented an access token limit in August 2012 to prevent third-party clients from becoming too popular. This was enough to force MetroTwit, one of the most popular Twitter clients for Windows, to shut down a couple of years later. Twitpic suffered the same fate after it claimed Twitter threatened to revoke access to its API over a trademark application.
Earlier this year, Twitter cut off livestreaming service Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph “consistent with its internal policy.” Shortly after, Twitter launched a very similar product called Periscope.
Dorsey invited developers to reach out using the hashtag #helloworld and let the company know what changes they’d like to see and what they want to see more of. The executive said it won’t happen overnight but that they will make the right decisions and serve the community in the right way.
https://www.techspot.com/news/62510-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-apologizes-developers-vows-reset.html
