de tomKronieken

The last few months, more and more online companies have arosen that focus on one platform. These platforms are services like Facebook, Second Life, Twitter, and all the other ‘big community sites’.

This is a very dangerous path to take. These companies lay their whole future in the big guys’ hands. They can be put out of business by the flick of a button.

Case in point: the latest issue that Twitter had. The people of Twitterrific (a very beautiful desktop client for Twitter) pinpoint the cause:

The technical part of the problem: Twitter no longer confirms post with XML response. This breaks apps that use the API (including Twhirl.)

While this wasn’t done on purpose, it illustrates the dependency of the client companies on the master company. (Luckily enough, the Twitter guys found some time to fix the problem.)

I for one wouldn’t start a company that depends so tightly on another one.