Since I’m only talking about users getting at their own data, the same access they have on Twitter, then there’s no way for Twitter to know what you are doing, or any legal way to limit it. But with a company the size of Twitter the law doesn’t matter that much, to any smaller business just having Twitter sue you is damaging enough.
This story I just saw illustrates my point: Instagram Reels - Facebooks Tik Tok rival.
Quite clearly anything that Tik Tok offers is quite easy to duplicate. A business this size doesn’t even care about Tik Tok’s data, but they could easily see there was nothing special about the Tik Tok interface that they couldn’t duplicate with their own app.
Super not true. Like, I could certainly write a program that would go ask Twitter for data and pretend to be a web browser, and as long as it was just me or a dozen of my friends using it, no one at Twitter would likely notice or care.
But if I tried to launch a commercial service that anyone could use to access Twitter data, of course Twitter would be able to tell and could cut you off.
Might want to familiarize yourself with Craigslist v. 3Taps.
I think he is talking about an app that logs into your own account on Twitter and grabs what you could normally see.
Another for instance, an app that simultaneously posts your tweet on “Flitter” and Twitter at the same time.
I am talking about that too. And the answer is: such an app is allowed if and only if it is in Twitter’s interest to have it work.
There are apps that you can have post to Twitter on your behalf, and apps that will show you your Twitter feed. All of them work within the parameters that Twitter has allowed them to work and which Twitter can change any time it feels like (subject, maybe, to things like anti-trust law, but it has few teeth and takes way longer than the lifetime of an upstart competitor to see through).
Twitter lets things that it considers to be complementary services continue to connect with it, because those increase the value of Twitter. It’s generally good for Twitter if every random device has an app that lets you post to and read Twitter (as long it shows you Twitter’s ads).
But if they see you as a competitor, goodbye access.
I’m not sure I understand what you are saying. I can build an app that posts exactly like I would post if I was doing it manually. Twitter would have no way of knowing if it was the app or me personally logging in and posting.
I bet you can’t.
Do you mean you can write something that runs on, say, Windows, and makes a connection to Twitter’s servers to send/receive data? If you make something that doesn’t pretend to be a web browser, then Twitter’s going to deny the request unless you have an API key, which you have to get from Twitter. Which Twitter has no problem giving you as long as you agree to their rate-limits and they don’t see you as a threat.
You can pretend to be a web browser. But if you want to be a competitor to Twitter, then you’re presumably going to have to operate at some kind of scale. Which means you’re not going to fly under the radar. If potential users can find you, so can Twitter. And they will likely first tell you to knock it off in legal terms, and if you don’t they will both take you to court and implement some variety of technical measures to screw with you. Because I bet you didn’t copy that web browser’s behavior bug-perfectly.
No I mean the app will log in as me, and make posts like me via the Twitter interface that they offer to users. Just like this reply I’m typing right now. I can write a program that can just do it exactly the way I am right now. The app clicks the “reply” button and then inserts this text into the reply and then clicks the “reply” button again.
Like, something that scrapes the screen of your computer and moves the mouse around and clicks it?
Yeah… you could. Although Twitter could probably detect that too and lock you out with Captchas. Or just by redesigning the site enough that your script got confused. But let’s assume they don’t. How could you possibly use something like that to become a competitor to Twitter?
The OP’s idea was that, hey, Twitter has all this data, so why can’t a competitor just come along and use Twitter’s data. And the answer is that Twitter won’t let you.
I feel like we are talking about two different things, which is why I asked what you meant. I read it as you don’t think someone could write an app to post to Twitter with a user’s username and password. And I disagree. If you are talking about more than just that, then that is the disconnect.
So are you telling me Twitter can control what browser I use?
Anyway, IANALawyer and what I know about the laws on this subject is kind of old, However look at the link I provided about Instagram Reels, and the following from my OP:
These companies have nothing of real value to their users other than the content, and as it’s becoming clear to me, the users don’t care about that content because they’ll keep creating more. Facebook can grab Tik Tok’s market without a problem because Tik Tok offers nothing special.
Otherwise, it is also clear these companies do everything they can to hold their marketshare or they risk following MySpace, and maybe now Tik Tok down the drain. And eventually if they don’t create better content or functionality they will be surpassed by a new technology.
Yes. Any business that offers a server to connect to over the internet does so on their own terms. It is by custom and consumer expectation only that generally webservers are configured to allow any browser to connect. But they don’t have to! Go and start Flitter and only let people using IE 6.2 connect. You probably won’t do very well, but anyone who wants to connect some other way can go pound sand.
Maybe. Facebook has absurd market power, though. I’d be more convinced that Tik Tok isn’t special if some random startup broke them. It also remains to be seen if Facebook can grab Tik Tok’s market. They haven’t yet! And Facebook existed the whole time Tik Tok came into existence. Obviously something was lacking.
Exactly, upthread I said that their biggest drawing power is their audience size. Facebook has a bigger audience size, making it a (potentially) stronger rival.
I’m still not understanding the “great opportunity for someone to take advantage of the data” mentioned in post 29 is. Did you mean just building a twitter interface? I’m not sure how that’s a great opportunity.
I think it’s based on the misunderstanding that I’m trying to correct that Twitter’s data is somehow out there for anyone to use, and that someone who could better analyze and present it could steal Twitter’s users easily because why would you go to Twitter.com when you could go to Flitter.com which has all of Twitter and also this other cool stuff.
But it doesn’t work that way. It’s Twitter’s data! You only get it if Twitter wants you to.
Yeah, which is why we’re all using Facebook Boomerang and Facebook Lasso and Facebook Dating and Facebook Poke App and Google Video and Google Jaiku and Google Buzz and Google Plus and Apple Ping and Amazon Spark.
@Shalmanese just above. I think I’d slightly rephrase @Tripolar’s statement that you quoted just above. Substitute “could” for “can”. Said another way, FB has the market power to make a good run at stealing TikTok’s lunch right off the table.
As you say, ref e.g. Google Plus, market power doesn’t guarantee success. But it buys the practical opportunity to try and a reasonable business possibility of success. Something that I, as 1 guy in a garage, lack on both counts.
For my app to displace TikTok I’d need a significantly different capability set and the luck/skill for that difference to be compelling enough to go viral. For FB to do the same thing they’d need only a small improvement in sell-able capabilities (i.e. sizzle). Their existing vast audience provides a lot of built-in steak (and viral head start) right from the git-go.
I may have sounded like I was considering the vulnerability of the existing apps to start-ups, but clearly the big forces have an easier time jumping into competition.
I think we’re now on the same page, right? Yes, it is possible to script interaction with the Twitter website running in a normal browser window (to some extent. Twitter could probably still detect you if it cared to unless you were very skilled/careful). But doing so doesn’t help you make a competitor to Twitter.
You’re so close to getting it. The value these companies have, for their users, are all the other users. That is also the value they have to sell for money. Their users.
Competitors start with the disadvantage of not having all those users already, so they need to either be willing to build a new user base up until it becomes attractive through some innovation that draws people in, or they need to have their own users they can potentially convince to use an additional service.
But both of those are hard.
I think it’s about the first one to do it right. Then network effects quick in and you become dominant.
Beta vs VHS: Beta was dominant until VHS realized that people would rather use tape length to increase recording time to 2 hours (typical movie length) or 3 (typical sports game length) than video quality.
MySpace was dominant until Facebook realized a cleaner, less annoying (remember auto-playing tunes on MySpace?) page would be more popular. Zuckerberg got his idea in part from upper class clubs which don’t admit riff-raff behavior.
If you can find a version of the same product which offers something others don’t and which is highly sought after, that can be enough. Sometimes, that highly sought after feature is being simple to use by doing all & only what the user wants. Google search engine in its early days may be a good example of that.
If you can do that, it’s like being the first species to master fire; You get such a self-reinforcing boost that you become unassailable. Until someone comes up with the next improvement. If it’s software-based, even a small team working on the right idea (like WhatsApp in its early days) can create something better than huge companies and it can spread extremely fast since marginal costs are insignificant. You see this in the gaming world too; the city simulator Cities Skylines replaced previously uncontested leader SimCity when SimCity got lazy and the Cities Skylines people made something better.