No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data Twitter is eliminating access to its API, but the once-free comms integration will still be available to those who want it – for a price. "Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead," Twitter's developer account said this morning …
Why in the name of Christ did they not announce that the API would be going paid, then discontinue the free tier 2 months later or something? People would have been unhappy, but "our business isn't profitable so we need more revenue streams" is at least a good argument. Instead they get to look like massive disorganized dicks, with the same end situation. Good job.
My way or the highway seems to have worked pretty well for him with Tesla & SpaceX. Where the guy revolutionized EV cars, and revolutionized the business of Space. I'm sure your comments and your views will have a huge impact on him....as he continues to apply the much needed revolution at Twitter.
To anyone paying attention it's very clear that Musk has come in and started doing all the stuff he was moaning about earlier. There were detailed moderation policies in place, now the only policy is "Does it upset Elon?". Banning journalists who say something he doesn't like? Shadowbanning content he doesn't like? All the decisions are predicated on keeping that fragile man child happy.
Oh, what a revolution!!
Yeah, except for the fact that it's not him doing the revolutionising. It's just done with his cash and in his name - https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd - and so far, what's happening is bearing this out. The truth will only come with time, but in the time that has elapsed so far, Musk is looking to be a reactionary who doesn't plan or consider fully the consequences of the actions, before he takes them. Any investor seeing this and coming to that conclusion, will run a mile from any enterprise that carries his name, and has him in charge.
He's the modern day Edison: steal a bunch of other people's ideas, make obscene profits from it, and then every gullible person on the planet will think you were a genius.
That's not genius, it's just plain old ruthlessness. There's more to life than just getting one over on your fellow man, although there are plenty of arseholes about who are yet to realise it.
Twitter is not like Tesla & SpaceX. Twitter involves the participation of millions of us in the common herd. The other two are authoritarian dictatorships. Twitter requires people skills that man-child Musk obviously lacks, and likely will come to a bad end.
Treating twitter like SpaceX or Tesla is like using a hammer to drive in a screw. Twitters value was in it's user base which he paid for and is now pushing away. SpaceX and Tesla were technology startups that mostly needed large amounts of money to grow into viable companies.
This is going to backfire spectacularly. My bro in law used to used a Twitter bot to make posts over the weekend etc, to advertise his business, special offers, discount codes, give aways etc. Things like that drive traffic to Twitter, it's then up to Twitter to monetize the traffic, adverts etc. They are monetizing the wrong end, and will just drive people to other platforms like Tik Tok . Twitter will become less useful, and die. Well done Elon, you legendary futureman.
His aim right now is Chapter 11. He has huge debt payments coming due. Going to Chapter 11 will kick them to the curb.
I have to admit that he has learned a lot from his master No45. How many times has he put his companies into Chapter 11 just to escape the creditors?
Trump may well be about to go bankrupt again just to piss off the NY AG and everyone else he owes money to. Why else would he dispute in court, the existence of 'The Trump Organisation' if he didn't already have the papers for Chapter 11 on his desk eh?
The question is if he's actually permitted to go Chapter 11 - there's a bit too much evidence he was aiming for it which may invalidate the protection that Chapter 11 affords. In addition, doesn't Chapter 11 require you to prove future viability? As far as I can tell, that evidence is still very much missing..
Not an expert, so I may have this wrong
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Twitter has just made its first debt payment of about $300 million so I'm not sure avoiding debt payment was the plan. Twitter makes first interest payment on Musk buyout debt -sources
Why else would he dispute in court, the existence of 'The Trump Organisation' if he didn't already have the papers for Chapter 11 on his desk
He (or rather his terrible lawyers) made the huge mistake of filing papers for "Trump Org 2" or something like that. Having a "backup" corporation ready to move assets to leaving a shell that's in legal trouble to go bankrupt is only going to bring the hammer down harder. Both on Trump and his lawyers. Remember what MAGA stands for: Making Attorneys Get Attorneys. The ones foolish enough to represent him in this mess may not only lose their licenses, but be in legal trouble themselves for this stunt.
They might have had a chance of getting away with it if Trump wasn't so vain he had to have his name on the replacement, making it easy to find. If it had been given some innocuous name and used a different mailing address etc. it might have flown under the radar.
Well, in the first couple of years after it came out, the number of "My class did a blog!" presentations at Computers & Writing fell drastically, replaced by "My class did a Twitter!". So that was ... variety, I guess.
I do know of some actual production applications in academia which used Twitter as a pub/sub mechanism for user workflow, and did something useful. It's pretty hard to make a tool that doesn't have any useful applications. Take Amazon's Alexa: you can totally throw one of those things at a serial killer who's chasing you.
... used a Twitter bot ... to advertise his business, special offers, discount codes, give aways etc.
So I'm not sure why he would expect Twitter to provide that service to his business for free. TV stations and newspapers didn't.
Here is a place where he might well prefer to pay Twitter: If he pays he could get a feed that doesn't have other (and competing) ads in it.
Back in the day, I was always amazed by businesses that would use radio stations for music on hold, when they making customers listen to other peoples advertisements (who want to take that sweet money we are wanting to take)
So I'm not sure why he would expect Twitter to provide that service to his business for free.
But that's basically the entirety of Twitter's business model: let people shout whatever they want to everyone in the world at 160 characters or less*, for free.
If it's not someone promoting a business, the vast majority is someone promoting themselves. For some reason, people want to consume that.
*They did eventually up it, yes I know.
Back in the day, I was always amazed by businesses that would use radio stations for music on hold, when they making customers listen to other peoples advertisements (who want to take that sweet money we are wanting to take)
A businessman (also a beer drinker) was trying to get an IT contract for his company with Molson, a Canadian brewer. The "hold music" was a compendium of their radio ads of the time, which were iconic, featuring a man and a woman in a situation involving the brand, such as he is a truck driver entering the US from Canada, and she is a first-day customs agent. They were light, playful and memorable. When the receptionist came back on the line to take a message, he asked if, after they had spoken, he could be put back on hold to finish hearing the ads! That is effective advertising. https://www.twovoices.com/hear
"So I'm not sure why he would expect Twitter to provide that service to his business for free. TV stations and newspapers didn't."
Twitter doesn't have to provide that service for free, but every other social media company does and is going to keep doing so. Twitter benefited from people posting information because it drove attention, both theirs and that of people reading it, so Twitter could shove ads at them. Since the other companies are still going to keep allowing that, people faced with a new request for payment might well decide to abandon Twitter, and Twitter would lose the revenue they were bringing in from the viewers. It's not that Twitter is or should be obliged to provide the service for free, but that there are downsides to losing the business and charging is likely to lose them clients when their competition is still allowing free usage.
Unless that is a clarification that they will have to hurriedly put out it seems this also applies to read-only API access. That means far fewer Twitter feeds on websites and far fewer embedded Tweets in news media. It's a giant decrease in visibility for his platform.
Advertising has one of two effects on me: I can ignore or skip it, or I rapidly become annoyed and vow never to buy that product.
Obviously, there must be people out there with abnormal psychology who think "wow, great, I want one of those", but those people ain't me.
That depends what form the advertising takes. Unwanted ads for things I didn't want? That drives me away and I try to block it. However, the post you replied to was about a very different kind: promotions sent out by the company selling it seen only by those who subscribe to it. That does tend to work better. I'm on a few companies' newsletters where they announce new products, discounts, etc. These are basically ads they send to me, but I not only agreed to see them, but I volunteered for them. I did this because I'm actually interested in possibly buying some of their stuff, and when that's no longer the case, I'll unsubscribe. Similarly, I also periodically visit a site which is basically a stream of ads from Chinese companies making weird items because it's fun to see what strange combinations they've come up with. That's not on Twitter, but if I liked a company and decided to go check whether they've posted any discounts I'm likely to use, that would attract some traffic.
Or alternatively, that guy might take the adverts to a different social media company and Twitter will have fewer people looking at them to which they can show other adverts. It might help with revenue, but it might also decrease the size of the user base. They've decided to find out which factor makes the larger difference to their financials in production.
No excuse but I believe one of the other reasons it was done was to stop the spam bots. However, he doesn't live in the real world to know that the scammers will use stolen money to pay for the API. Not that he gives a fuck where the money comes from just as long as he gets it.
Bang go all those Python tutorials that get you to create a Twitter bot.
Claiming its dataset is "among the world's most powerful,"
That's not really a good sales argument after you have been shedding advertisers and users left, right and centre and have only amplified the amount of hate slushing around.
I'd say charging for the API is the best way to lose all that free marketing as well as the originally supporting eco system. Why would someone pay for access to something that is heading for bankruptcy quicker than a Tesla self-immolates?
Yeah, being a toxic wasteground of ignorance, hate, bigotry, conspiracy theorist nut-jobs and anitsemitism is a sure-fire way to make a success of anything.
Because, if you examine any of those people who loudly proclaim to be "on the right", in anything more than trivial detail, these are the things you are going to find.
What Fail Whale doesn't seem to understand is that Twitter only consists of data that users have sent it. He keeps throwing up barriers to people actually bringing data so ultimately he will just sit on a mountain of stale data when fewer and fewer people add new data.
Suppose Mr Musk loses all $44 billion that he paid for Twitter, or whatever the amount is. What would he lose in real life? I mean, what actual real-world things would he no longer have, or be unable to acquire? What would he no longer be able to do as a result of that loss?
Don't confuse money with wealth. Property and services and such are wealth; 44 billion tallies in a ledger are not. A person who starts with $150 billion can lose $40 billion and literally not notice it at all in day-to-day life.
Ah, but he's lost reputation, you say. I'm not so sure about that either. The world now knows that he's willing and able to throw $40 billion away, simply out of annoyance. Or $44 billion, if that's the number -- he doesn't even have to care about $4 billion one way or the other. That's a reputation for you -- something that anyone who messes with him in the future will have to consider.
...and don't forget: this is the man who lost $140m on Bitcoin "investments" in 2022:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64428257
Seems that despite his immense wealth, he is more than happy to throw multi-million $$$'s away, even on a whim!
Clearly the man Musk has lost all his common sense and just fires off salvos of stupidity or gross negligence, depending on his mood.
Let's not forget that Musk didn't pay $44 billion, he paid about $13 billion himself. The rest comes from the Saudis and a number of banks. If this thing collapses he has lost the bone saw people and a few big wall street players a fair bit of money too.
Curious why the saudis would invest in twitter. I wouldn't have thought it would be a big thing in their parts.
Perhaps they thought EM had the Midas touch? Although I suspect Auric Goldfinger would have made more of a fist of it.
I don't imagine EM will be keen to accept invites to any diplomatics missions of theirs - if it all goes pear shaped, twitter might not be the only thing that goes up the chimney.
"Curious why the saudis would invest in twitter. I wouldn't have thought it would be a big thing in their parts."
Your assumption is incorrect. As of June 2022, an estimated 71.9% of the Saudi population were Twitter users, third to WhatsApp and Instagram which are both Facebook products and thus can't be bought so easily. It would make sense for them to get control of something that popular for their own political ends, whether that involves censoring stuff for the locals, monitoring private messages, or getting more personal information on people they want to hack (first with spy software, then with autopsy tools). I don't know what power they have currently, but I wouldn't trust Musk to tell us honestly. If the company went bankrupt, they'd likely get more control of the remains.
Not sure why complainers are complaining - you're living in a capitalist world - if you don't have money - just die!
I can't wait for a real world "Total Recall" where companies can charge for air - you want to live? Pay me - otherwise die!
Fantastic - the height of capitalism - literally free money for companies to profiteer even more.
Let's not race to the bottom (or should that be top) - let's teleport there!
Yes, those grapes are most assuredly sour!
Everything should be free! -- Not entirely sarcasm. On an entirely idealistic level I wholeheartedly agree with this. I also feel very strongly that nobody should have to work when we could be pursuing art, or whatever each person's personal goal is.
Reality is reality. Doesn't go away just because it's unfair.
Don't get me wrong - I don't care either way - I have no (vested) interest in either direction - but companies will always try to make money - that's their raiso d'etre - so if they can monopolise the market and get you dependent on what they're selling, that's actually the best business model going
“I do not at all wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries, that what used to be called the ‘submerged tenth’ can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level…” —House of Commons, 13 June 1948
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” —House of Commons, 22 October 1945.
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” —Perth, Scotland, 28 May 1948
-- Winston Churchill
"the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property [is] the first object of government."
-- James Madison
"Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise"
-- Abraham Lincoln
I'm not advocating communism. I don't think any perfect system exists.
What I am saying - is people seem to be criticising a company for monetizing one of their assets which used to be free, but the whole point of companies is to make money - so why wouldn't they?
If you take this concept to its purest form, you would find a commodity - like air or water - which humans can't do without - and charge them for consuming it. Personally I think it's abhorrent - but if it's legal (and if you can skew the lawbooks by writing the lawbooks) why not? It's then legal!! :)
Same thing with the NHS etc - it's a great institution and something to be proud of - but in a pure capitalist society it shouldn't exist - if you don't have money and you're sick - DIE. It's the perfect execution of Darwin's theory of evolution. Even the US system (more capitalist than the UK - of course) where you have to pay so much money for insulin is - in a way - abhorrent. If you take Darwin's theory in a certain light, insulin dependents are a group that are not "the fittest"
Of course Musk wants to make it expensive to search "tweets". The only "USP" that Twitter has, is its curation algorithm (which he now controls). If you want to choose what you see, rather than accept what the algorithm, under his control, decides you should see, you can damn well pay for it!
I wouldn't go near Twitter now (and barely did before), but anecdotally, a lot of people who do use it have started seeing people they "follow" disappear, and have also started seeing all the shite from Musk himself even though they have never asked to.
It stands to reason that if Musk can control what you see, he can control what you are thinking about, and it's not even paranoid to point out that that is one step away from controlling what you are actually thinking.
If he were clever he's have been subtle about it, but he's not and it's blindly obvious your timeline is suddenly filled with RWNJs. So people either leave Twitter or just switch to chronological order and which is only filled with people they follow and carry on with their day.
The zero-notice thing feels like a shakedown. Put devs under pressure, force them to decide on impulse, with no time to plan ahead or think clearly. Its the timeshare sales technique.
Except in this case the people they're shaking down are their actual content creators, the people who drive others to the site, and who generate the ad revenue twitter needs. People whom twitter needs as much as they need it.
So, its commercial suicide.
Many firms have tried this before, mistakenly believing they have a captive market and can charge what they like / ignore customers / change the T&C to suit themselves. Remember QuarkXpress, Blackberry?
Elon Musk appears to be resorting – publicly, at least – to troubleshooting Twitter platform problems with his own anecdotal experiments.
TechnoKing Elon Musk gets behind wheel of a Tesla, joins freeway and engages FSD mode. Up ahead, a CHP traffic officer has pulled over a car...
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Oh wait, he's serious?? Let me laugh even harder!
Sure, kill the thing that probably most contributes to large scale use of your platform without first improving your own service (Istr that of the most prolific tweeters something like 90% used an external "interface" to do so because most twitter users agree the official Twitter app and site kinda suck). What could go wrong?
You want to play a game of who can adapt fastest to unwanted scraping? Companies that don't want you to scrape can mess with the UI in so many ways that it's often not worth doing it if they have the knowledge and will to combat it. Combine that with a terms of service that forbids it (possibly not enforceable but do you want to argue it in front of all the courts because they have more lawyers than you). If you're planning to make a profit from consistently scraping a company that doesn't want to be scraped, you face some large challenges. Maybe Twitter will fail at properly blocking scraping, and I'm in favor of people trying it because having overworked engineers constantly changing things to foil scrapers means it's more likely to break and watching it break would be fun, but I wouldn't want to set up a business doing it.
It's free, standardized and Usenet works just fine at scale. Also no stupid line length limits. If your idea fits into 160 characters, you haven't put enough thought into it.
Got my popcorn bucket ready -- looking forward to less containers of that which promotes growth.
We run a small app that sends out London traffic updates to Twitter, @jambuster. It's free and based on the data feed from TfL, but we add in maps and other bits of useful information to try and help people get around London a bit quicker.
It's free as we hate ads and the costs of running the servers is quite low and I can write it off as a buiness expense.
We get loads of people telling us it's useful, especially for the Blackwall Tunnel on a wet Friday evening, to know there is an accident and one tunnel is closed, so find any other way home.
We have no information about what is going to happen, if we will be affected, we're a very simple use case, what the costs will be if we do have to pay, it could take a few days to sort things out. Will we have any limits set on how many tweets (circa 200K to date and counting), nothing. If Twitter wants to monetarise stuff, they really need to be giving more information out and actually tell us what they want. Is it £1, £10, £100, £1,000 per month?
I'm assuming it's going to be circa £100/month which means we'll close the service down, which is a pity. Of course we could be compltely wrong or Musk may change his mind yet again, and change it again and again.
I pity MBA students who will study this buiness in future courses. Of some his defenders will say he's playing 5D chess and working at a far high level. Sure looks to me as if he's clueless and trashing around but what do I know.
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