Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

If you care about Twitter remaining open, sign this petition and make your voice heard. Together we can make a difference in how this all plays out.

Please sign this petition, and share it as widely as you can. Let’s make our voices count!

There have been a lot of rumblings recently about Twitter potentially closing its APIs down or becoming a closed or much more restrictive platform. That would be quite a reversal from their many years of being an open platform, and would be a problem for the nearly 1 million developers using those APIs, plus tens of millions of users who use products and sites that use those APIs as well.

The media has turned this into a bigger issue than it probably is — because it’s not likely that Twitter will actually shut off their entire ecosystem. However, it’s clear there is a lot of confusion both inside and outside Twitter on what the right way to proceed is.

There is actually an optimal solution. I’ve written extensively about how Twitter actually could make more money by keeping their APIs open, and monetizing them (with ads in the free API, and without ads in an optional paid API).

Twitter could still be a media company if they want to be one, and could also monetize their APIs. It’s a bigger pie. There’s not reason not to do that – they would get a piece over everyone’s business and would immediately be one of the largest ad networks and data sellers on the Net.

But, those of us calling for openness, transparency and at least clarification of intent from Twitter have received no answers. It’s time to ask more concretely, and to make our views known collectively.

If you care about Twitter remaining open, sign this petition and make your voice heard. Together we can make a difference in how this all plays out.

Please sign this petition, and share it as widely as you can. Let’s make our voices count!