LinkedIn Promotes 3rd Party Developers, Whereas Twitter Demotes Them
When I logged into LinkedIn yesterday, I was greeted with this message above.
Does LinkedIn and Twitterfeed have a special new arrangement? Maybe, maybe not.
This got me thinking about the recent changes from Twitter whereby they have placed tighter restrictions on API usage by 3rd party developers.
Twitter used to have a source label on Tweets if posted by a 3rd party app. Twitter removed this all together. Even on Facebook if you post an update via Hootsuite, the update will have Hootsuite as a source and a link back to their site.
Facebook is embracing and helping 3rd party developers.
LinkedIn are doing the same, by showing the status update source origin.
Twitter on the other hand have been distancing themselves further and further from their developer community. In fact many social media developers I’ve spoken to over the last couple of months “would rather not develop for Twitter if they didn’t have to”.
A little while ago Twitter cut off their feed to LinkedIn. You were able to setup your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts so your Tweets also posted as LinkedIn updates. Twitter shut off this feature, without warning LinkedIn at all.
Really, I think many of us expected better from Twitter here.
LinkedIn has always supported their network, even using Tweets to help power their LinkedIn Today product. LinkedIn embraces all the main social networks these days with native Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet and Google + 1 Buttons all over the LinkedIn site.
LinkedIn has no bad blood, they have left the Tweet option on their site, still allowing LinkedIn members to share their updates to their Twitter account.
Twitter is changing their platform to ultimately create move value for themselves, but in the process partners and developers are left feeling shafted.
Will this ultimately benefit Twitter in the long run?