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Sep 15, 2012

Twitter Might Be Looking To Kill Off Third Party Image Hosts

Twitter's big API changes have been causing all kinds of problems for third party Twitter clients, but they aren't the only ones affected by Twitter's new outlook on life. According to Buzzfeed, third party image hosts are in danger as well.

It shouldn't come as a huge surprise considering these image hosts are yet another set of sites drawing eyes away from the main Twitter pages, where the ads are. While Twitter can't exactly prevent people from tweeting links to third party services, they can (and are) removing the services from their apps, the apps which have less and less competition as third party ones get pushed to the side. It makes sense; as Twitpic founder told Buzzfeed "They're trying to control those eyeballs on their apps, they're an ad-based company, they make money that way." More here.

This might not be as disastrous as the API changes that are sure to drive some third party clients into the ground, but there's sure to be more to come. This distancing from third party image clients just goes to show that Twitter seems willing to ride this train all the way to the end. Hopefully it won't be stagnant and ad-bloated by the time it gets there. 10% Off Carrot Ink Products Today!

2 comments:

Adam said...

dumb move

Outcast said...

This would be kind of annoying if they did end up killing off all these image hosts. It seems excessive and they really have to stop trying to become completely independent of other websites. They don't need that to be a good site, where they're at now is perfect, I don't get why they need to change it in all seriousness.