Twitter developers should stop plugging holes

Twitter logos.Fred Wilson laid out an interesting post at the Business Insider this morning. For those who don’t know, Wilson is a partner at Union Square Ventures and one of Twitter’s top investors. Wilson’s basic point was that current Twitter development focuses on plugging holes in the service, not creating new things with what the service can offer.

Consider this – not terribly long after Twitter launched people realized they needed a way to share long URLs in a compressed format. Along comes bit.ly with its URL shortening service. How bout TwitPic for sharing pictures. The examples continue from there. Point is, though, that none of these things take any sort of interesting advantage of the Twitter platform or concept. They’re just methods by which people share the shortened versions of information encourage by Twitter. As Wilson says it, these are things Twitter should have had built in to the service at launch.

Maybe you didn’t hear him correctly. These are things Twitter is going to do. Just like Facebook did with all of the crazy apps that just filled the gaps, Twitter will be rounding out its own feature set to compete with and provide the services of third-party developers. In some cases, as was the case with FriendFeed, that could mean acquisitions. Wilson didn’t say it overtly, but his message is loud and clear.

It’s time for developers to do something great, like the social gaming apps for Facebook. Analysts estimate social gaming will hit $1.6 billion in revenue next year, and Wilson thinks that number is too low. That’s a pretty nice pie to slice up.

Source: Business Insider

  

Twitter to add video tweets

Twitter logo.According to an article in the Telegraph, Twitter plans to add video tweeting service to the site. Startups like Tweetube and Twiddeo have tried to do the same but with little success. Up until now users had to exit Twitter proper to see the vids. With the update they wouldn’t have to.

It sounds like Twitter is hoping to use new features to bounce back from bad press surrounding celebrities leaving the site. I mean, Hannah Montana is gone. You gotta do something to get back on top, right? Seriously, if content is vapid enough that even Miley Cyrus would leave, I’d say skies look stormy in Twitter’s future.

Video tweets sound so painful I would be forced to immediately unfollow anyone making them. Of course they could make those daily recording devices extremely popular. I do love me a good privacy scandal.