Just like everyone working to build a business based on Twitter, we at Twitalyzer have always been somewhat circumspect about the relationship we have with “the source.” Twitter’s leadership has always been kind of vague about which direction they would take the business, especially when asked about making money. Our hesitation has ebbed and flowed over the past year — increasing when @biz said that they would be doing analytics, decreasing when we saw their “Enterprise” dashboards, increasing when they started changing their terms of service, decreasing after Chirp when we thought we understood their strategy, etc.

June 10th was another roller-coaster ride given Twitter’s acquisition of Dabble DB, makers of the Google Analytics tchotchke Trendly.

At first Jeff and I were bummed; just like all the folks developing Twitter apps for iPhone, anyone building an advertising solution, the Co-Tweets and Hootsuites of the world working to build business-management solutions on the platform, we kind of felt like we’d done a bunch of work to make Twitter more valuable only to have the rug pulled out from under us.

But we thought about it for a little bit and remembered that Twitter never made us any promises. We knew full well when we started investing time and energy into Twitalyzer that Twitter could invest in analytics like this at any time, at least when we were being honest with ourselves.

More importantly, we can’t succeed with Twitalyzer unless Twitter succeeds as a platform. While we love Twitter and all the great things the platform powers, we are also practical enough to realize that unless they figure out a way to become a real business that all our work could be for naught. And despite the amazing work their developers have done over the past year, this weeks API outage emphasizes that Twitter is still very much a work in progress. If Ev and Biz believe advertising and analytics are their path to stability and profitability, well, who are we to complain?

Finally, we love that Twitter thinks that analytics on the platform is important enough to make this acquisition! Sure, we wish they would have bought us or our friends at Klout, but we’re happy for Dabble and we are absolutely excited to know that Twitter will be doing our marketing for us, emphasizing the need for analytics against the platform and the value of measuring success in Twitter-based marketing and customer relationship management.

Given all of this, I personally wanted to reiterate our commitment to our users and customers:

  1. Twitalyzer will provide highest-quality measurement and reporting on Twitter for as long as we are able. Unless Twitter changes their terms of use (again) and forces us out of business, we will continue to develop against the platform and provide the same or better services we have for the past year;
  2. Twitalyzer’s customers will continue to be our number one commitment. When we decided to take people’s money, we knew we were “all in” on Twitalyzer and nothing about Twitter buying Dabble DB changes that. “Money changes everything” they say, but we are going to work tirelessly to make sure that money changes everything for the better;
  3. Our payment model will stay the same, and customers will always be able to cancel anytime for any reason. We’re optimists, but we’re also realists. If Twitter comes out with an analytics package significantly better than Twitalyzer we would expect customers to want to switch and won’t get in the way.

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We are self-funded, profitable, and not beholden to anyone except ourselves and our customers. This great luxury allows us to continue to innovate and do what we believe is best for our customers, our business, and our friends. Not everyone has this luxury — certainly not Twitter — so we are going to make the most of our opportunity regardless of how the ecosystem around us evolves.

I welcome any questions you have about this post, our business, or the Twitalyzer service. Email me at eric at twitalyzer dot com, tweet to me at @erictpeterson, or give me a call at (503) 282-2601.

Sincerely,

Eric T. Peterson
CEO and Founder
Twitalyzer, LLC