Welcome to the Real World, Twitter App Developers
Well hello there, Twitter developers. Almost didn't see you laying flat on your face after Twitter just steamrolled you with the new Twitter redesign.
It hurts, doesn't it? Makes you want to complain a little, right? Makes all the underdog startups want to bitch and moan about how Twitter has "changed" and now they're all about the profit and not about the innovation. Twitter is just burning bridges, throwing you all the gauntlet, am I right?
Well try this: grow up.
You don't need babying any more than any other industry does, and this is the way business works. Remember that Twitter gave you life, and they can take it away, too, if you aren't creative, ambitious, and innovative enough to keep thriving.
In almost every industry in the world, there are big companies and small companies. Often, the small companies come up with good ideas that the big companies adopt. Then the big companies crush the small companies. Sometimes the small companies keep performing well, innovating, and pushing out better and bigger products, until they become another one of the big companies.
It's survival of the fittest, and it works.
In today's "Twitter economy" there's a glut of crappy apps. There are a few quality standouts--Tweetdeck, CoTweet, and a handful of mobile apps, for example--but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Twitter apps right behind them that just suck.
Those companies probably don't need to be around much longer. Truth be told, their developers are probably not making any money, and they're probably wasting a lot of time and effort on a venture that just might not be meant to succeed.
The successful ones--so far, anyway--should quit complaining. Don't whine that Twitter is throwing you under the bus. Instead, find a way to keep competing and innovate on top of the recent redesign. Find a point of differentiation and keep striving to succeed and capture users where the new Twitter redesign fails them.
Twitter is just doing business. They need to succeed just like every small developer out there needs to succeed, and they especially need to come up with a business model before the venture capital starts running out. Let them keep doing their business, innovating and advancing. And you go do yours.
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