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.
I think this deserves a bit more attention. It's easy to point fingers and make all kinds of what-if predictions, but just handwaving money aside in favor of a poorly defined API utopia ignores the reality of running a business.
Agreed. It would be a much more compelling argument if there were examples of successful API companies presented as possible models for Twitter as an API company. (In addition to the example of Google as an advertising company.)
Yes I have to agree with the two of you. That was my first thought upon finishing. It's odd Dalton doesn't define one or two solid examples of what this successful cloud API could be.
I felt that discussing alternate business models was outside the scope of the post for 2 reasons: 1) I am an outsider, and no one understands what could or could not work better than the people working at Twitter. I am not sure what the pro-API camp inside of Twitter had in mind. 2) Debating which model would work better would derail the points I wanted to make in my post.
I do think there are several large cloud companies that have both their "native" UI and rich/powerful APIs. For instance Salesforce, which my company both pays for & extensively modifies and extends via their API. Given the attention this post has attracted I may write a followup post just on this topic.
what would the example of a successful advertising company have been, before google?
in other words - isn't this kind of the point? google is the big advertising company. everyone else is a copy. the big api company is still open space...
>> what would the example of a successful advertising company have been, before google?
??? There was a whole generation of successful advertising (Internet) companies before Google. Even Google went through an internal debate about how much/whether to copy the best of that generation (Yahoo). And advertising-funded businesses are decades older than the Internet.
I think this deserves a bit more attention. It's easy to point fingers and make all kinds of what-if predictions, but just handwaving money aside in favor of a poorly defined API utopia ignores the reality of running a business.