When the FCC was considering whether to regulate the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, Twitter came out strongly in favor of the new regulations. According to a post from Will Carty, Twitter’s Manager of Public Policy:
“Safeguarding the historic open architecture of the Internet and the ability for all users to ‘innovate without permission’ is critical to American economic aspirations and our nation’s global competitiveness.”
Carty waxed on about the importance of openness to Twitter’s DNA saying, “openness promotes free and fair competition and fosters ongoing investment and innovation.”
But apparently, openness is only important when it serves Twitter’s best interests. The social networking platform showed a very different face in a recent skirmish with an app called Meerkat.
In early March, Meerkat took the tech world by storm. The simple app lets users stream live video from their mobile devices to viewers through Twitter. The app quickly became a media darling as people like Ashton Kutcher and Madonna embraced it. Meerkat quickly raised $14 million from Greylock Partners and Hollywood heavyweights including CAA, WME and Jared Leto. Just two weeks after its launch, Meerkat has already signed on 120,000 users.
But just as the app was gaining momentum, Twitter, which claims to have openness at its heart, attempted to kneecap Meerkat. The communications platform stopped letting Meerkat use its social graph, which gives apps access to all of a user’s Twitter followers. This blow came just as Meerkat was gearing up to make its South by Southwest debut. The festival has been the launching pad for many startups that are now a part of our everyday online life -- including Twitter.
Early users of Meerkat were able to immediately have everyone who follows them on Twitter following their Meerkat streams and they could easily connect to the Meerkat streams of the people they were already following on Twitter.
Users who download the app today have to search and add people to build up a follower base. They won’t be automatically notified when friends are broadcasting unless they’ve already connected with that friend on Meerkat.
The move didn’t kill the app, though. In fact, Meerkat’s user base climbed 30% after the restrictions were put in place. Meerkat founder Ben Rubin recently told Re/Code that despite some bumps in the road (including Madonna’s video not streaming on time), the app is alive and thriving.
“We know what dying platform data looks like because we've seen it,” said Rubin, “and this is not it.”
But Twitter’s move definitely slowed Meerkat’s momentum.
It’s no coincidence that Twitter limited the app just as it was unveiling its own live-streaming app called Periscope. Twitter reportedly paid $100 million to acquire Periscope months before it was unveiled. When faced with competition from upstart Meerkat, Twitter had no qualms about putting its heavy thumb on the competition scale to give its own app an advantage.
This is basically the same behavior Twitter was condemning during the net neutrality debate. And clearly, we're not the only ones who noticed something was amiss. Twitter went out of its way to praise openness and the “frictionless experience” of the Internet. But when it comes to managing its own communications platform, the company clearly feels free to create as much friction, or favoritism, as possible.
So what’s it going to be Twitter? Are you in favor of openness or not? Because right now, it doesn't seem like you are promoting the “free and fair competition” you claim to champion.
