I don't like the message Twitter sends with the semi-walled garden. Maybe I'm completely wrong here, but this to me says "develop on our platform and if you come up with a good idea and we like what you do we'll just do it ourselves"
Not saying that's never true, but in this specific case there's just no way Twitter went from zero to release with this app since meerkat launched. A company the size of Twitter doesn't do weekend hackathons for important launches like this. Not that I know of, at least.
Add to that the obviousness of this app, and bayesian chances are pretty high they just came up with it concurrently but were later with the release.
EDIT: It also explains why Twitter went so draconian on Meerkat.
EDIT2: But I'd have to add: yeah, Twitter's behavior is chilling. The way they cracked down on Meerkat, and now just try to play this launch off as if nothing happened, it's disingenuous. Just come out and say it, Twitter: you used your technically justified power over Meerkat to gain competitive advantage.
EDIT3: A friend tells me they didn't develop this app, they just bought it. Makes even more sense.
> Not saying that's never true, but in this specific case there's just no way Twitter went from zero to release with this app since meerkat launched. A company the size of Twitter doesn't do weekend hackathons for important launches like this. Not that I know of, at least.
Periscope had been in a closed beta for months before they were purchased. I'm surprised no media has ever tried the angle of Meerkat being a Periscope clone.
I'm pretty naive when it comes to these things but my sense was that Meerkat's use of Twitter was pretty asinine and that was the main reason for the banishment. Does Twitter have much of a history of banning services merely for competing?
Always has been the message, right from Microsoft to Apple to Twitter. I expect Uber will do the same - they're just in the "let's open up our API to make the world a better place la la " phase now. As soon as someone builds a breakout app on their API, they'll eat it.
