Twitter Cuts off Third-Party Ads


on May 27, 2010

Twitter’s recent Ad crackdown alienating the developer community comes as no surprise. In fact, many industry watchers have seen it coming for some time now; it was just a matter of ‘when’. And well, as expected brickbats have started flying in thick and fast, especially from the developer community and third-party advertising networks like Ad.ly and 140 Proof who will be cut deep by this move of Twitter.

Twitter on its part is doing all it can to make the “updated terms of service for developers” where no third-party advertising networks and developers can insert ads into a user’s stream, very reasonable. In the words of Dick Costolo, Twitter’s COO, the decision is to "preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created" and ensure the "long-term health and value of the platform." Well, how far are these sincere remains to be seen, if one goes by the recent developments in Twitter.

Twitter had launched its own official Twitter clients a few weeks back, and now the prohibition barring ads developers from using the most obvious way of monetizing unofficial clients is not merely a co-incidence. Developers have no choice other than showing ads outside of the stream as they can no longer insert ads into the user’s streams. So, the stream, a ‘cash cow’ for most developers who have hitched their wagon on Twitter, is out of bound now for advertisers other than Twitter itself.

It is great news for Twitter; however it doesn’t definitely bode well for the 3rd party network developers. Twitter has in fact pulled on a fast one (on the developers), this time round.

This decision of Twitter would undercut and destroy many businesses that have been created and developed on Twitter. Well, the coming days would be interesting. Let’s watch!

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