Mike Beasley Goes Through The Impact Of Twitter's Display Guidelines On Tweetbot
Currently Tweetbot lets you show the name of a Tweet’s author one of two ways: their full name (Mike Beasley) or their username (==@MikeBeas==). The iPad and Mac versions also include a third option that shows both in the form of “Mike Beasley @MikeBeas“. Only third option is allowed by Twitter in the new Display Guidelines. The other two will need to be removed.
The whole article is a comprehensive — and thus — saddening look into the future of Twitter clients. What’s odd about the design guidelines is that most are completely arbitrary and seem to have no impact on helping Twitter maintain control of its brand. They just seem to be purposefully annoying. The quoted rule is a perfect example. To Twitter, why does it matter if you only show their username? What possible benefit arises from that?
It’s like a war of attrition: Twitter doesn’t want the bad PR from openly killing third-party clients, so instead they are making developers’ lives harder and harder to make them give up and quit.