OpenRoad + Mod7
Two pioneering organizations, together at last.
OpenRoad is pleased to announce the acquisition of creative agency Mod7.
Read the letter from our PrincipalAfter Twitter's recent announcement, we're looking a little more closely at 3rd party apps
Posted on July 04, 2012 in Media Culture by Mod7
Now that Twitter has announced its intentions to clamp down on its API (applications programming interface)—potentially affecting hundreds of popular 3rd-party clients like Hootsuite , Tweetbot and Seesmic —we're left wondering... are Twitter's savvy 3rd-party developers putting too much stock into one channel? After all, there are plenty of other interesting things happening with—gasp!— Facebook.
For a while now, users of Facebook have had access to plenty of interesting 3rd-party apps that reconfigure the standard Facebook feed into something more tailored to suit individual preferences. Here are some great examples we like:
- Gabi : This mobile app filters your Facebook content by popularity and other facets that you configure. It's a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of how your content resonates with your audience. Plus, it sports a gorgeous mobile interface—an area where the native Facebook app falls flat.
- Octofeed : This browser-based service parses stories from your Facebook feed and their "authors". Though it doesn't go to the extent that Gabi does in remixing your content, it does provide a nice alternative view to the Facebook experience.
But back to Twitter. Apparently, developers are " outraged " over the announcement. Is this the end of Twitter as we know it? Could this catalyse the general tendency of the fragmentation of social network channels towards all-out anarchy? Possibly. But all that's happening anyway.
Let's not forget: this whole hubbub with Twitter has happened before, resulting in urgent calls to replace Twitter. So, for now we can wait and see how the developer community reacts and adapts before joining in with the panic. And, in the end, the experience for the average Twitter consumer, while perhaps having less choice in which client they want to use, will remain generally unchanged.