Walt Disney’s Ghost Joins Twitter Board

UPDATE:

I wrote this almost a year ago when Twitter was more subtly implying that they were going to make their own mainline applications, often in competition with 3rd party “development partners.” Of late we are now seeing the “other shoe drop” as Twitter is getting far more aggressive with their APIs and the plan to “cut lose” 3rd party applications now becomes much clearer.

Simply stated, “it’s all about the valuation…stupid!” Twitter tried subtle, now they are just coming right out and telling application developers to stay away from their mainline space. Perhaps they are having a little difficulty competing with the independent development community. My advice is to modify their own APIs and first take advantage of new features in official Twitter apps before opening up improvements to the development world in general. After all, it worked for Microsoft and it would work for them as well.

In any case, what I wrote a year ago about Twitter is even clearer today!

(April 2010) There has been a lot of speculation surrounding a “leak” that Twitter will soon begin developing and launching some of its own “company” applications and features. To be sure, some of these new capabilities will undoubtedly compete with existing partner solutions, and although they never mentioned any names, I would put money on the fact that much of the functionality delivered by “TweetPhoto” is very high on their list. If Twitter wants to maximize their potential (and valuation) in the social networking arena, they will need to actively embrace photo…which is the generally recognized “killer application” for all social networking. As things stand today, virtually all Twitter has done in digital photo sharing has been to make their extensive user base available…to TweetPhoto!

If these leaks turn out to be true, it would clearly indicate that Twitter is finally building a real market strategy. They are growing up and realizing that while they originally had this “wild idea” to build a real time, town square discourse site based on 140 character text messages…they have actually built quite a juggernaut. Early on, they took ideas and help from a large and willing community of 3rd party developers, who implemented powerful new features using Twitter’s published and open APIs. These “partners” certainly helped build brand awareness and also added tremendous incremental utility, but Twitter is now discovering that some of them might be creating some pretty big ideas of their own, perhaps even big enough to rival Twitter, or at least significantly limit its strategic options or terminal market valuation. While what they are doing is comparable to Steve Jobs’ recent OS-4 “middleware stay away” posture, let me use another Californian as perhaps a better example.

In 1954, Walt Disney started the construction of his own “wild idea” in Anaheim, California. Disney Land not only proved tremendously successful, but it also attracted large numbers of 3^rd party “developers” who built hotels, restaurants and their own venues, immediately adjacent to Walt’s “park idea”.  These developers captured significant value for themselves; value which was based, almost entirely, on Disney’s original idea. However, his company apparently learned a lot from their first product launch. Enough so that when they conceptualized Disney World for Orlando, instead of purchasing just 160 acres for the park, this time they quietly acquired 47 SQUARE MILES of “market space”…all reserved for their own “added value!”  This space would eventually provide plenty of room for multiple theme parks, hotel complexes, branded resorts and much, much more. Space that today adds revenue and builds incremental value for The Walt Disney Company, rather than for the 3^rd party “developers.”

Simply stated, Twitter is trying to convert Disney Land into Disney World, and my bet is that there is still enough time for them to take control over their strategic direction as well as capture a tremendous amount of incremental value.

But then, Steve Jobs has always known this.  He’ll partner with you too…as long as you remember to bring your checkbook!