Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Twitter builds on its character
By David Gelles in San Francisco
New direction: co-founder Evan Williams outlines his vision at 
Twitter’s first conference for software developers
Source
: Chip Chipman/Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images.

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CASE STUDY
This highlights a line in the sand that Twitter 
has drawn with its developers, who have built more 
than 100,000 applications that operate on the site and 
interact with tweets.
Twitter, said co-founder Evan Williams, will focus 
on the ‘core experiences’ – keeping the platform up 
and running and implementing an advertising sys-
tem. Developers should put their efforts into build-
ing specified products for niche audiences, such as 
applications that serve business customers, or har-
ness the film and music communities.
But even this line between the host and the apps 
is blurring. One of the most fruitful areas of third-
party development has been in apps that allow users 
to manage their tweets on a desktop or mobile phone. 
Indeed, 75 per cent of Twitter’s traffic happens not on 
Twitter.com, but through the likes of the Tweetdeck, 
Seesmic and Echofon apps.
Last week, however, Twitter shocked the devel-
oper community, saying it had purchased the 
maker of Tweetie, the most popular iPhone client, 
and had developed its own app for BlackBerry 
smartphones.
This prompted an outcry from developers, who 
complained Twitter had pivoted from benevolent 
platform to aggressive competitor.
‘The strength of the reaction is a testament to the 
naiveté of the community,’ said Mike Hirschland, 
a partner at Polaris Venture Partners who has 
invested in Twitter developers. ‘At some point the 
platform is going to get deadly serious about making 
money, and you better get out of the way.’
That time seems to have arrived. Mr Williams said 
Twitter was now focused on making money from its 
55m daily tweets. ‘It’s a high priority for us.’
To developers nervous that the platform for 
which they are building software might compete 
with them, Mr Williams would give no reassurances. 
‘That’s part of the game,’ he said.
Source
: from ‘Twitter builds on its character’, Financial Times, 15/04/10 (Gelles, D.).
Discussion questions
1 
Why did developers react so negatively to Twitter’s purchase of the maker of Tweetie? What changes does 
this vignette illustrate?
2 
Why did Twitter change its business model?
3 
What fundamentals of strategy could Twitter adopt to become more sustainable?

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