Twitter is Cutting the String - You Won't Like This

Third party Twitter clients like TweetDeck, Echofon, and the newly released MetroTwit for Windows all have something in common; they're not designed or developed by the folks over at Twitter.

Recently, Ryan Sarver, from Twitter's platform team, posted a message publicly on Twitter's Development Talk group.

Here is a little excerpt from his 1,127 word statement:

As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way. This is already happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking. According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis. - Ryan Sarver

You might be asking yourself, what does this mean? Basically as Twitter is growing so much from last year's 48 million tweets to 140 million tweets a day, Twitter has been notcing one trend going on; Twitter developers don't follow the "standards" that Twitter has set on their mainstream applications.

We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are. For example, some developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a tweet. - Ryan Sarver

In the long run, it makes sense for setting these standards, but I really think Twitter shouldn't be as strict. Ryan has pointed out that Twitter revokes hundreds of applications every week for the ones not following these "standards". I agree with Ryan on one hand in terms of marketing Twitter and all, but on the other hand, the "consistent way" just doesn't register in my mind. The "consistent way" Twitter prefers might not be the way that others prefer.

We might be seeing some of your favorite Twitter applications going in the near future. In fact, most of them might be going away soon. Take a look at the quote below:

Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no. - Ryan Sarver

Applications like TweetDeck I can see going very soon. Because of the added Facebook functionality, I'm quite sure Twitter does not want this. Personally, I only use Twitter for Mac and Twitter for iPad. With all the recent news going around about the latest update for Twitter for iPhone, the #dickbar has been a horrible addition. What will come next in their next shabby advertisement gimmick?

What will be the future of Twitter's clients on all of its devices? As of right now, I'm thinking Twitter is being a bit to bland and closing down their API for their own standard use. In fact, I believe the third party Twitter clients is what revolutionized Twitter today. Twitter cannot come up with all of the ideas; other developers can chime in and by making a third party Twitter client, that's how to really come up with the ideas.

What do you think about this whole mess? Are you in with Twitter's changes or are you out? I just want to find out what will happen next!