DISQUS

@Chris. You said, "API’s are cheap, request-wise: simple text sent usually over a single request."

Actually, they might not be. Yes, we all know a ping here or there is nothing. Even hundreds of thousands. But if you've ever been involved with a truly high volume system, there's hard and very real capital costs for infrastructure, bandwidth does add up, etc. And if you've got some kind of indexing going on you've got serious thrashing on servers. That's just the capital costs. Next you need a higher end, (meaning more expensive), data architect and folks to run Ops. And now comes some inappropriate use/abuse. So you've got a product manager or bizdev person for that. (They usually like to get paid as well; even if they are also betting on the magic jelly beans, a.k.a. stock options.)

Having gone through this process myself, I'm guessing current limits are probably just stuff they slapped together while they try to work out an accounting system whereby they could even form customer relationships and bill for usage tiers at all. In the meantime, they just have to cut out pure abuse. As to other apps' use of the feed spreading the Twitter meme, this might not be entirely true. That's just pure cost in an environment where there's practically zero revenue stream at all. I mean, they're not even running ads on their search results page after paying 15MM for Summize. And you're only going to make so much by selling the "insight data" on what people are talking about.

Scott

@William: You said, "By using Facebook or Twitter you are essentially raising the value of their companies and applications."

Welllll... sure. But c'mon now. That's been true of every BBS system since the 80s. (That's 1980s.) And it was true for CompuServe when people paid several $$$ PER HOUR just to use a Special Interest Group. (SIG) And some forum moderators today get nothing other then the joy of doing the job whereas the forum owner gets any ad revenue. (To a limit. There's backlash to this as well as exceptions. About.com Guides, for exampole, share in revenue.)

Those who provide the venue not only have costs, but have the right to earn something beyond. Personally, I've no problem with Twitter, FB, whomever, making money. I am interesting in watching the means by which they do it and how they control costs for APIs, etc.

Scott

I wrote about something I decided to call Approt back in April, 2006. http://www.germaise.com/blog/2006/04/link-rot-m...

Basically, the short of is that even if in the "New Economy" the incremental cost of copies or bandwidth or whatever for 'bits over atoms' approaches zero... it just AIN'T zero. And in some cases, apps may disappear or break if their data sources either disappear or lock them out. (Unless maybe they can afford to pay for the feed.)

Anyone whose ever run a service that's had some kind of fixed pricing or free data feed eventually runs into this for outlying use. In some cases, (such as the plain ole' phone company being engineered for peak demand on Mother's Day, holidays, etc.), the answer is to just factor it all into overhead and so on. In others, there's tiered pricing; as is found with most hosting plans. So whether it was Prodigy and AOL going to flat rate pricing in the early 90s, then having to put limits on heavy emailers or today's API services, there are simply certain suckers slurping from their straws too deeply at some digital troughs. (Sorry, I don't have time right now for a better metaphor.)

The bottom line is this is potentially at least one aspect of a business model for Twitter. IF the value of an external service using a feed is enough that they can generate enough revenue to help pay for some huge use of feed, then they keep going. If not, then not.

I think we're going to see more of this soon with anything that's successful.

Scott

My take on this is that you're right. But getting wrong. What I mean by that is that online behavior is - in my admittedly subjective opinion - getting better in a lot of ways, not worse.

Like you, I've been in this game awhile. In fact, you mentioned places like Prodigy. Which, if you used it, chances are you used something I either designed, built or managed. From the late 80s' through the 90s as the 'great unwashed' somehow managed to find the "Any Key" and bumble their way online, their newbie behavior was often the equivalent of no shirt or shoes, which is a bit trashy even at the 7-11.

Now, however, online is essentially ambient. While there are still very late adopters coming online, they seem to approach with a bit more trepidation and care. Therefore, the problem that exists now is different then newbies. And you point out some of them in what you classify as Trolls, Stone-Throwers, and Faux Celebrities. Part of the answer will be more closed communities and tools for managing such entities. Even if they're a very small proportion of the online population, like any single-issue person or public they can have an outsized impact. Personally, I think we're just at the very beginning of online community right now. (I say that as a long time industry vet from Prodigy, to About.com to others.) This early period of truly ambient online experience will take some time to get used to. And it will take some time for personal and group controls to come into play ot limit the damage of fools and their followers. But it will happen. It has to happen. Very little humans ever do together grows or thrives without some kind of cooperation; be it though enforceable rules, or at least social norms. There are already plenty of thriving and successful online communities that have such norms established and mechanisms to maintain them. More will follow.

None of what I've said is meant to say their won't be thieves, con artists and worse using online tools to bad purpose. And yes, online does enable some such behaviors that had no prior means to implement bad acts. But for the most part, this behavior isn't any more prevalent online then offline. It's just more visible.

Any communication tool can be used to coordinate things for good or ill. This should be obvious. It's just as obvious it's likely utterly ridiculous for someone to use Twitter. At the same time, if you're the person doing a report on possibilities, (however fanciful), you would be negligent to leave out a tool that has obvious one-to-many alert capability.

I do have to say though, I like the idea of bad guys using Twitter. I mean, wouldn't this be a great headline and story.

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"Terrorist Plot Foiled when Bad Guys Login for "Go Message" and Get Fail Whale."

THE INTERNET, Month, Day 08 -- Five terrorist cells were caught on Tuesday when their uncoordinated efforts, (due to a systems failure of their communications tools), caused them to show up at their target at the wrong time. FBI agent Biff Bifkins tells us, "Well, this one guy was supposed to show up with the detonator, but he couldn't get his Twitter message and showed up at the wrong time. The guys with the explosives where just sitting there." Asked how the waiting team was busted, Biff went on to explain, "They were apparently using an unlocked iPhone they had stolen, but had tried to use an Android application on it that was to tie in to their underground network. There was a lot of confusion about the compatibility issues with the phone operating system and available applications. When they ran to the AT&T store to try to activate a real iPhone, the clerk got suspicious and called us."

Our reporter had a rare opportunity to talk to one of the handcuffed terrorists. But he just muttered, "I told them we just should have used AIM or Yahoo. They're old and not as sexy as Twitter and the latest Open Source stuff, but you know... they always just sort of worked." Questioned further about how he thinks the others in his cell were captured, he answered, "I've been thinking about that. It may have been our Facebook group. We really shouldn't have put our pictures up on there. But we were having so much fun sharing our favorite band information and so on, I guess we just forgot what our group was about. I mean, we're all about killing innocent people, not really having fun."
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Bottom line: It's really not at all difficult to imagine how Twitter, or any other communications tool, can be used by criminals of any sort. The report isn't wrong in this regard. It may seem silly, and I'd personally think it a foolish tool for such use, but... it's hardly unimaginable.

You said...
"Rather, this is a situation where a good definition of a journalist and news-based blogger would come in handy."

The thing is, you also defined this...
"their goal was not primarily to document"

This is a sensible definition. (Though I'd personally suggest that there are rare times when a reporter should get involved. E.g. Maybe stop filming the bleeding victim long enough to dress a wound if no one else is around to do so.)

Anyway, there are some purists, (often so wholly selfish and blinded outside of their perspective; be it right or left or whatever), who lack common sense.

Common sense for any large event planning demands some degree of security. Common sense, in this country anyway, also suggests wide-ranging press access. Which in these cases, either party is going to allow if only to avoid all the negative backlash. Put these together and what you get is a requirement for credentialing. We can certainly argue about whether this has been or is being well done.

But in any case, credentialing will take time. A blogger with serious journalistic intent will seek out and participate in that process. Not everyone will pass, for whatever reasons. There's only so much room and resource. This is no different then what traditional media face in a great many venues.

As to protestors vs. police? Please. Spare me. Three things are required for fire. Fuel, Oxygen, and a spark. For the metaphor, you can pick who's who here in terms of fuel/oxygen. The point is, all that's missing is a spark. And though some rookie cop may screw up and escalate something, chances are it's going to be some self-possessed jerk in the crowd. At the end of the day, those individuals have - through criminal intent and action - simply created a self-fulfilling prophesy and who's message no one sensible on either side of the argument is listening too any more.arge event planning demands some degree of security. Common sense, in this country anyway, also suggests wide-ranging press access. Which in these cases, either party is going to allow if only to avoid all the negative backlash. Put these together and what you get is a requirement for credentialing. We can certainly argue about whether this has been or is being well done.

But in any case, credentialing will take time. A blogger with serious journalistic intent will seek out and participate in that process. Not everyone will pass, for whatever reasons. There's only so much room and resource. This is no different then what traditional media face in a great many venues.

As to protestors vs. police? Please. Spare me. Three things are required for fire. Fuel, Oxygen, and a spark. For the metaphor, you can pick who's who here in terms of fuel/oxygen. The point is, all that's missing is a spark. And though some rookie cop may screw up and escalate something, chances are it's going to be some self-possessed jerk in the crowd. At the end of the day, those individuals have - through criminal intent and action - simply created a self-fulfilling prophesy and who's message no one sensible on either side of the argument is listening too any more.

Social media presence clearly has potential tangible benefits for marketers. And intangibles as well. I'm not sure any thinking marketers essentially debate that.

Nevertheless, it's just as clear that many in the social media pundit / practitioner crowd have only the weakest and murkiest of metrics or outcomes to offer for what success looks like. (Even of non-quantitaive measure.) At least as compared to traditional media buys. (And for the purposes of this discussion, I'd now slot SEM and even SEO in there as traditional.) To be sure, it's always been difficult if not impossible to fully judge an old-fashioned PR campaign. Or to isolate impact of an outdoor media buy when combined with other local marketplace efforts, etc.

Still, there's something especially fuzzy about social media marketers' claims. They're reminiscent of the very early Web 1.0 incantations of "You Don't Get It," from the early adopter crowd. (Which I chanted as loudly as anyone.) These predictions have more than come true and then some. Though just as often - if not moreso - the future was clearly mis-understood by many of the self-proclaimed experts. And even less so by the many who set out a shingle proclaiming SEO/SEM expertise. To this day, the lack of skill amoung plenty of "practioners" in these areas falls into the category of "I laugh 'cuase it's funny, I cry 'cause it's true."

If there's one major positive difference between 1.0 and 2.0 marketing issues, it's that there's a lot more smart people with real budgets looking carefully this time. The debate will happen faster. Things will ideally get understood faster. There'll still be some stupid money out there and some of the snake oil crowd will slough at the trough a bit. But everyone "gets it" now in terms of the overall strategic view. The questions needing answers are increasingly of a tactical nature.

In the end, for marketers of any size, Web 1.0, 2.0, and Web Point X don't matter. And they never have. It's the same as it's ever been. There's time, resources/$$$, the means by which you engage with your marketplace and results. People will put $$$ into stuff that works and abandon stuff that doesn't. Regardless of how many eyeballs or social graph connections something has.

Sicerely,
Scott
(Just another no longer hidden resource in your social graph.)

Oh, I don't know. Even a random question from an SU/Newhouse folk is likely more fun then calls from the telemarketing folks. And while it can be fun to listen to them go through the script on occasion, that's admittedly scraping the bottom of the fun barrel.