Twitter used to be cool, man. Everyone knew that Facebook was bossy, demanding cuts of in-app sales, sneaking around privacy issues, but Twitter was free and open and putting daisies in the barrels of guns and so forth. Well, that was then. Twitter has thrown a roadblock up in the path of the Tumblr blogging platform. Tumblr users used to be able to import their lists of Twitter friends into Tumblr for cross referencing, thus greatly building up their Tumblr presence and making it a more attractive place to be. People were at the party, you know? Now Twitter has blocked that. The move comes on the heels of a similar action against Instagram and the announcement of new rules for Twitter’s programming interface that will severely limit third party apps using the platform.
Maybe this is all part of the harsh reality of needing to preserve a product and not giving other social media platforms more ammunition. But Twitter is unique in that many people see it as a platform first and a company second.