Twitter has told third-party developers that after making their platform take off, they are now not needed anymore and should stop developing clients for their platform.

Twitter’s platform/API leader Ryan Sarver issued an official statement to the Twitter developer world today that’s sure to send a shudder down the backs of many people building new ways to use the popular social network: if you were thinking about building a new Twitter client – don’t. “Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.” Sarver said that existing Twitter clients would be tolerated, if closely watched. It was a strong statement that seemed to fly in the face of Twitter’s long history of a strong developer community. The tone of the announcement won’t help, either.

What’s the harm in outside parties developing new ways for people to access Twitter? “…Our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions,” he wrote. Mainstream users are actively confused by different interfaces? And this is such a big problem that non-standard interfaces need to be stamped out? That just seems crazy, patronizing, arrogant, obnoxious and suspiciously arbitrary. Surely the harm done by the tiny number of rarely used 3rd party interfaces that really create a different user experience is much, much smaller than the value Twitter has gained from innovation on top of its platform and the harm that messages like this are likely to do to what’s left of the trust Twitter has in its developer community. Maybe Twitter’s big enough it doesn’t need anyone else anymore, though.

Also see: Ars Technica’s take on this.

Comment via this identi.ca conversation.

Twitter has told third-party developers that after making their platform take off, they are now not needed anymore and should stop developing clients for their platform. Twitter's platform/API leader Ryan Sarver issued an official statement to the Twitter developer world today that's sure to send a shudder down the backs of many people building new ways ...