If you build your platform on another platform; You're inevitably going to have a bad time. I don't use Path so I don't know how much of a blow this is to their platform, but it can't be good. Hopefully, Path has enough traction that it can grow without $FB's social graph.
back
4 comments
I think the statement "if you're building your platform on another platform; you're at the mercy of the underlying platform" is more accurate.
Facebook and Twitter have changed their Terms of Services/APIs multiple times which has resulted in bad times for Facebook applications like Vintage Camera and MessageMe[1] and Twitter services like Flattr[2].
However, Tapbots has been successful in adapting its Tweetbot client to comply with Twitter's API changes[3]. While the API changes cost Tapbots extra development time to bring Tweetbot up to snuff, their core business was not adversely affected. I don't think Tapbots has a bad time because they make Twitter clients that rely on third-party API access, but they are at the mercy of Twitter continuing to allow third-party API access.
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732439280457836...
[2] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/16/flattr-twitter-paym...
So I love TapBots and I have paid for all of their mobile apps. When you look at their Twitter products, the amount of software they can sell is restricted by Twitters API limit. If you look at the Tweetbot For Mac[1] post it says:
> If you’ve used the Alphas/Betas and have decided not to purchase, please do us a huge favor and Revoke access; that frees up extra tokens for potential customers.
I don't think it's good when you have an awesome development team like TapBots who makes products that are, in My opinion better than Twitter's native clients, and you're capped to 100,000 device installs "just because". I know it's not "just because"; Twitter needs to become a business and generate revenue, but the same companies that helped build the brand and popularity are now punished.
Great point. The API access restriction hasn't stung TapBots yet but the token caps are frustrating and potentially stifling to future growth.
I'm interested to see what Twitter will do when Tweetbot starts to approach the maximum number of tokens allowed. My guess is Twitter will grant Tapbots extra tokens. I think the API restrictions are geared towards preventing new companies from using Twitter's APIs in unintended ways (like Flattr) than shutting down established Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Echofon.
I'm definitely curious to see how Path's growth works out now. It seems that since they are focused on close friends and family that phone contacts will work for this to some extent.
They definitely pose a threat to Facebook's stream quality if they do continue to grow. They could pull an Instagram and take away the Facebook share feature, or make it less useful. Something that could backlash on them, but doesn't seem to have affected Instagram's growth. If they grew too large and did something like this, it could effectively reduce the number of quality posts on Facebook, something you could argue it already suffers from depending on your current Facebook friends and likes.
I like that idea of focusing on quality--I definitely feel like that is something which is lacking on $FB. Although; maybe that's my fault since I'm not training $FB's NLP engine that I don't want to see bad content.
I think the post last week about Path spamming the guys address book[1], although I think it was user error, is not helpful to Path's cause. Like You, I'm interested to see how Path's growth works without $FB.
[1] http://www.branded3.com/blogs/the-antisocial-network-path-te...
It's not inevitable that you are going to have a bad time. Confirmation bias.
Even if they knew this day was guaranteed to come, it still makes a lot of sense for them to have had the feature up to now. A lot of the previous growth has been from this feature.
I totally agree with that. I just think that Path's future becomes questionable if they don't have a contingency plan. It would be interesting to see how much of their new user signups come from $FB. I would imagine that it's pretty high, but I don't know. I just look at other companies that lost their $FB boost and the outcome generally isn't good.