Its been some time since xitter, reddit, and other sites began paywalling their API, causing third party integrations and apps to collapse.
I’m wondering, did any of these sites end up with paying customers for the API? Are there examples of third parties paying to continue their services? These sites sacrificed massive amounts of community and developer good will to privatize the internet - how did it work out for them long term?
It was not about getting paid for API usage, though they let the door open so they could sell that service for very specific purposes but not for alternative apps.
Their point, and it was admitted during the leaked conversation with one of the independent app developers, was about opportunity cost. Their official apps offer ways to get more money out of users, more advertisement, in app payments and all that. That’s the reason why the phone browser experience has also been killed.