Adam, I appreciate the email and think you raise some great points. It's all stuff that we aspire to be able to do and things that I think foster great developer ecosystems. We are currently growing the developer advocate team to get poor Matt and Taylor some help ( https://twitter.com/job.html?jvi=o5DxVfwU,Job).
Please send along any recommendations of people you think would be a great fit for the role. We have a few more people starting in two months which I think will make a big difference. Ryan -- Ryan Sarver @rsarver <http://twitter.com/rsarver> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 6:44 AM, Adam Green <140...@gmail.com> wrote: > First of all, I honestly believe that Twitter HQ values developers and > appreciates their contribution. That is why I decided to devote myself > to this area a couple of years ago. I was amazed that when a dev > reported a problem the engineer responsible replied here and tried to > solve it. That is better than any big product I know of today. That is > why you have so many developers putting in all this work. > > I also believe that the last few announcements from Ryan and others > have been the worst examples of third party developer management I > have seen in 30 years in this business. I can see what Ryan wanted to > accomplish in his latest message. He wanted to provide guidance. He > ended up telling us that Twitter no longer wanted anyone to build > clients, didn't explain clearly what a "client" meant to him, and > pointed out that hundreds of apps that fail to meet his undefined > "high bar" were cut off every week. Not good. Sorry, Ryan. You are > right. You are not good at communicating with third party developers. > At least not in written form. You look like a very cool guy with a lot > of personal charm. Maybe it works better in person. You should spend > some time talking directly to developers in small groups. It might > help you develop some canned responses that work. > > Here is a simple way this could have been prevented. If you had a > developer relations person with experience and skills in dealing with > third party developers, who have completely different motivations from > in-house coders, he or she could have quietly passed around a draft of > what you wanted to say. This would have gotten very strong negative > reactions. You would have been able to reformulate it to strip out the > implied threats and turn it into a positive roadmap. It could have > been framed as "Here are some areas we promise to leave open for > developers. If you work here, we will give you all kinds of extra > support and promotion." > > Here is another simple way this could have been prevented. Create an > advisory board of developers. Rotate people through it every 6-12 > months. Let them vet announcements in advance. Let them respond to the > questions. It works in every other company I have worked with. > > Here is what could be done instead of these repeated bombs you keep > dropping on the community. Give people a present. Announce that you > will use some of your precious ad space to promote third party apps, > and not just the ones with millions of dollars of VC who happen to > work in your building. Find new ways to rev share with developers. > Offer all expense paid trips to select developers to visit your office > for a day to hang out. HOLD A DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE. > > There are many other things a good developer relations person could > do. Talk to Guy. That is how he started for Apple. > > One last thing. Give this developer relations person a seat at the > table when big decisions are made. I can read lots of signals, like > this "high bar" nonsense, that there are negative attitudes inside > Twitter towards developers. They are a pain in the ass. Yes. But they > do hundreds of millions of dollars in development and promotion for > you for free. Hire someone good for $100K+. Give them a million dollar > budget to really take care of developers and run conferences and get > togethers around the world. It will pay off many times over. > > -- > Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc > API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi > Issues/Enhancements Tracker: > http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list > Change your membership to this group: > http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk > -- Twitter developer documentation and resources: http://dev.twitter.com/doc API updates via Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitterapi Issues/Enhancements Tracker: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/list Change your membership to this group: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
