Not only is it a kick in the teeth to developers, but the reason Twitter has traction, spread and growth is because of the diversity of tools around Twitter. The user experience is not all in their hands, and isn't it ironic that this comes a week after the "dickbar" incident? Twitter hasn't really proven they can keep the user experience the way it should be. There was a post last week here on HN about how Tweetie used to never crash and the lastest release was awful... Get your act together Twitter or don't be the elephant in the room, or act that way.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that Dickbar and the backlash it received contributed to this. For instance, the iOS official app is the best Twitter client so far despite shoving promoted trends down our throats. One could come up with a better client with no dickbar and everyone would be flocking there. By discouraging new clients, they are discouraging our ability to turn off dickbar.
And are they also "shoving" an extremely popular, free service with ongoing development "down your throat?" I am a fan of free software etc. (even set up a diaspora account... lol), but I don't understand how people expect businesses such as twitter to run forever without a viable revenue stream.
Of course, they shouldn't kill the goose that laid the golden egg, but after a while you have to wonder if these eggs aren't just tin someone took a can of spray paint to! What "gold"? Tons of users are nice insofar as they lead to money. Users are not an end in themselves.
Sorry for the rant but please, people, stop acting like twitter owes you something. (My comments are vis-a-vis users, I do think what they are doing to developers is not right, from a courtesy point of view.)
