This was one move by Twitter that I still can't wrap my head around. That was some prime real-estate Twitter had on LinkedIn, advertising the service in a way that few paid placements could match. It's not like I'm going to go to LinkedIn to follow anyone's Twitter activity on a regular basis; it's just publicity for the Twitter feed's existence and substance, so I know to follow them in a real Twitter client.
Twitter wants to "own" the consumer end of the experience so they can monetize it with display ads.
If you watch over the past six months, they've actively encouraged third-party publishers so businesses get more invested in twitter, while simultaneously discouraging third-party consumer-focused clients.
LinkedIn seems like more of a publisher than a Twitter client, since the content is promoted to non-Twitter-users. If anything, I would think having 'teaser' content on publisher sites linking back to full content on Twitter would work to Twitter's advantage.
Forgive me, but how exactly do you "teaser" 140 characters? Or am I misunderstanding and you are more meaning they show a few of the users tweets so you know kind of what they talk about.
I don't spend much time on any of the social sites so I am not familiar what was pulled, this just happened to stick out to me.
From what I've gathered, Twitter would be upset that LinkedIn doesn't support "expanded Tweets" (so you can preview images and links), among other features. If the features make the experience nicer, then wouldn't that be one more reason to follow the link to twitter.com? Having the full feature set on LinkedIn would decrease Twitter's traffic. Not to mention that they're asking LinkedIn to make their interface more complex, which LinkedIn is right to reject.
"You need to be able to see expanded Tweets and other features that make Twitter more engaging and easier to use."
I still can't understand Twitter's strategy. The sharing of content is what made it popular, isolating "their" content will drive it to celebrity watchers.
I guess advertisers understand publish/subscribe better than social interaction.
Twitter's Strategy:
Step 1 - Standardize message format and control access points for consumption of Twitter content enabling easier ad unit injection into the Twitter stream.
Step 2 - ??
Step 3 - Profit.
As a very occasional visitor to the site, with no account, I've found the changes discourage my casual exploration of the service. Mnay actions lead to a sign-up / registration page. Much like G+ on Android.
on LinkedIn, twitter couldn't control the inventory, so they couldn't monetize the content.
It was their tradeoff of reducing usage while users are on LI, while hopefully increasing consumption on their own site from those users.
It's certainly a gamble, since I'd argue that LI was more a source of new twitter users rather than siphoning off views from already loyal twitter users.
The other possible threat in Twitter's head might have been LI bootstrapping their newsfeed off Twitter (which they'd mostly been doing) and then growing it large enough to actively compete with Twitter.
I'm still not entirely sure where Twitter is trying to go with the 'new direction'. I trust they have a cunning and well-reasoned plan, but honestly it feels a lot like getting bored playing a game of Civilization - You kill all your citizens, destroy all your infrastructure, give your money to the Romans, then declare war on everyone.
Twitter's disruptive potential is arguably greater than its cash-flow potential. Strategy shift to the latter might be net-negative from an buyer's perspective. They are also at risk of killing brand value, which is tied to the perception that twitter is a universal-fabric-of-the-intenet service. Once Isolated, they don't seem so scary to incumbents or valuable etc.
This is the core problem; typical lack of long-term thinking when there is so much pressure for revenue. Too bad no one could think of a better idea than display ads.
LinkedIn has generated $500M+ revenue in 2011 and will generate more than $900M this year. And they market value is $13B. So you can hardly call them "vaporware with no revenue".
