Is Twitter getting too big for its britches?

Today I received some bad news.  And it has not made my day.  Basically it means I’m going to have to do more work.  Not that I mind work.  What I mind is having to redo something I already put in place to be better organized.   The post today will be my rant about what caused the bad news.

Last month Twitter announced stricter rules regarding the use of their API.  There were a lot of reasons quoted by the company for the rationale.  None of them made sense to me. And it has caused me to rethink my social media updating strategy.

Let me explain why.  I use Twitter as my tool for updating both Facebook and Linkedin.  I, like many people, have a real job and need to spend most of my day running my business.  Social media is important to my business and my marketing efforts, but it’s not the sole thing I do all day.  Therefore, I need tools and processes to make this happen.  For a couple of years now I have been writing in one place, but posting in many.  This has enabled me to be very active on the Social Media front without impacting my business.  This new ruling means that has to change.

I spend very little time out on Linkedin.  I have to say it’s because I find it too busy.  It’s hard to find information and I don’t have time to weed thru minutia.  Tweet Deck helps a bit.  This application is just what Twitter is trying to hurt.  They want everyone driving to the Twitter site and not using tools or aggregators as they are called.  Guys, that’s a sure way to make me stop using Twitter at all.  One of the rules implemented in June said developers should not use Twitter APIs to mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.  In other words, don’t make it look like Twitter.  I don’t believe Twitter patented the way their product looks.

At first, this didn’t seem like a big deal when I originally read the announcement in June.  That’s where the “bad news of the day” comes in.  The bad news is something that was going to show up in a tool I use, won’t be there.  Because of this new ruling.  When I went out to research the ruling, I found out about Linkedin and Twitter severing their ties.  Ouch.  That hurt.  That meant  my tweets couldn’t post to Linkedin.  Ok, now I’m annoyed.  Especially since I found out this ruling will affect another application I use heavily.  That application was hoping to leverage the ability to aggregate social media streams into one place and now Twitter won’t be part of that aggregation.  Grr.

When you look at all the companies, particularly in the CRM space, that have been busy buying up social media applications so they could provide social media interfaces and aggregation of posts, you have to ask yourself what was Twitter thinking.  Or were they thinking at all?  Has Twitter gotten too big for their britches?  Or are they just trying to lure people to Twitter sites so they can spam us?  My gut feeling is this is the case and from what I’m reading, that’s what others believe as well.  It’s all a corporate game and we the end users are the chess pieces.  Gosh, I hate being a pawn.

To say this has made me grumpy today is an understatement.  Now I have to rethink my updating strategy.  As if I didn’t have a million other things to do.  Enough ranting.  Got to get back to work.  More on this topic later.