Twitter has become a powerful platform within a growing social media community.

However, not everybody subscribes to Twitter’s simple interface, quirky “chat” like work flow and 140 character limit. Not everybody sees the benefit of joining or conversing on Twitter, when sites like Facebook and LinkedIn do more of the heavy lifting for business development and ease-of-use.

Truth be told, Twitter is a bit of an odd-ball in the mix of social media – but a power tool none the less.

Twitter management is telling developers to stop making 3rd party applications. And, they are getting rather animated about it. Why is that?

Twitter does no longer support developers making new Twitter client apps, and that it would keep a tight leash on existing third-party clients.

This is perhaps surprising, but if you dig deeper, you’ll understand that it’s money-driven. Officially, because Twitter wants to own that part of the Twitter experience now — that’s why it has been building and buying Twitter mobile apps for the last year or so. And because it wants to make sure everyone on Twitter has a consistent experience.

And because it wants to sell ads; it will keep more of the ad money if everyone is using official Twitter clients, as opposed to clients from other developers, with whom Twitter might have to share ad revenue. However, there is a REAL message here: More than 40% of tweets are still sent from non-official Twitter apps, according to an analysis of 25 million tweets by Sysomos. This doesn’t tell us where the tweets are being read, which is ultimately more important for Twitter advertising.

“Don’t make the best tools available, make Twitter the platform, and stop the competitive app development”, is the message we’re getting.

An interesting study next: Here’s the chart of the day from Silicon Alley Insider: (click for larger image):

What do you think? Should Twitter prevent the application development from 3rd party from happening? Are advertising dollars more important?

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Entrepreneur Magazine says Jon Rognerud is one of the most sought-after Digital Marketing Experts. His clients extend from high-end brands and middle-tier businesses in both B2B and B2C. His SEO website optimization book, "The Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Website" from Entrepreneur Press is in bookstores now.