Facebook cuts off friend-finding API access to Vine

http://allthingsd.com/20130124/facebook-cuts-off-friend-finding-access-to-vine-twitters-new-video-app/

by ericyan • 13 years ago

25 15 13 years ago

untog• 13 years ago

Shrug. I don't usually take Facebook's side on things, but Twitter should expect this kind of response after shutting out third party developers themselves.

tomasien4• 13 years ago

I say "booooooo!" not because I'm some user-first purest, but because I think this is just a bad idea. Facebook and Twitter DON'T need to be at war. They just don't. They're different, and they always will be.

Twitter deserves no sympathy, but I don't think Facebook needs to be doing this, with Instagram OR to Vine.

tomasien4• 13 years ago

Side note, I weirdly got to use Vine in its pre-alpha testing 6 months ago because my friend used to work with the founder at their previous company. One day, when he was showing it to me, we noticed a new user (there were only like 12). His user name: "Jack".

The were acquired the next day. Just a fun side story.

onedev2• 13 years ago

They're not at war from a user-facing product sense, but they are completely at war from an advertising and brand promotion standpoint.

Each wants to make their own social platform more attractive for advertisers. Things like this affect that notion.

But I agree in that they certainly are being more aggressive towards each other.

tomasien4• 13 years ago

They're more likely to help each other than hurt each other, but I think that's hard to see. They're competition is other advertising media, not each other. Their ads are getting them profitable, but if either ever hits on an ad model for social that works as well as adwords does for search, the other will copy it and they'll both benefit.

DigitalSea• 13 years ago

I guess karma is a bitch. I have no sympathy for Twitter as they've pulled similar moves that have screwed over third party developers as well. What goes around, comes around and it's Twitter's turn to get a taste of their own medicine.

This isn't a deal breaker for me using Vine, I've found it to be a really fun application I think is going to take off. and definitely compete with Instagram.

spdy• 13 years ago

Walled garden wars 2.0. Dont let anyone become a threat in any form. Instead they both should evolve to social service providers but they rather cut off each others arms.

ajaymehta• 13 years ago

I just downloaded Vine 10 minutes ago, and assumed this was a launch bug in their app.

My thoughts after seeing this: wow, what a cheap shot by FB and I feel for the Vine team getting caught in this crossfire (I gather it's still their small startup team inside of Twitter).

flexxaeon2• 13 years ago

My guess is Twitter/Vine anticipated Facebook would likely block them, and built the feature in any way. If they didn't get blocked, gravy. If they did they gain some sympathy points (points they have been losing lately).

flexxaeon2• 13 years ago

I've never 100% understood why these social networks were so integrated. It's normal to me now, but years ago the concept of facebook.com/twitter and twitter.com/facebook would scramble the business side of my mind. Especially when I think back to how solid of a line was drawn between Myspace and Facebook

hezhit• 13 years ago

Not the first time, Facebook cuts off almost all APIs to Wechat. At one time Wechat even cannot use the access token to get user's id for login verification. Every API returns "data:[]".

tectonic• 13 years ago

And, again, the people they're really hurting are the users.

Facebook cuts off friend-finding API access to Vine

Related Stories