2023 was the year social networks realized that they were sitting on massive troves of data. And some companies, such as Twitter (now X) and Reddit, decided to change their terms to shut out third-party experiences on these platforms. In the process, they also put a price on their data ' something they believe is highly valuable today as it can be used to train AI models. After talking to several third-party developers who built apps and services on top of these larger social networks, we learned that there are mixed feelings among the developers about building experiences around social networks. While they are excited about the rise of decentralized networks, some of them haven't seen enough incentives to build out new apps. Twitter has historically been one of the most popular social networks when it comes to third-party apps. Some of those apps even pre-date the name 'tweet.' In January, however, the company started to shut out these clients without any notice. Within days, in...
learn more
