Seesmic dumps BlackBerry: Start of a stampede?
Seesmic, a popular third-party Twitter client for desktop and mobile devices, today announced it would end support for BlackBerry handsets at the end of June. In a blog post today, the company shared the news, saying the reason for the decision is …
Context & Ripple Effects
In April 2010 Twitter shipped its own official app for BlackBerry, and a year later Seesmic — one of the platform's most prominent independent clients — is pulling its BlackBerry support at the end of June 2011. The squeeze is structural: an independent client now competes head-to-head with the platform owner's first-party app, so marginal platforms are the first to lose the argument for development resources.
GigaOM frames the exit with a question — the start of a stampede? — because Seesmic's decision lands amid a month of Twitter news showing where the company's attention sits: t.co automatic link shortening rolled out on Twitter.com, new Follow Recommendations, and Adam Bain citing 80% of engagement coming from link clicks as the hook for marketers. None of that momentum runs through BlackBerry.
First-order effects
- Seesmic's BlackBerry users lose updates and support at the end of June 2011, leaving Twitter's own app as the main remaining option on the device.
- Seesmic redirects its engineering effort toward the desktop and mobile platforms where its Twitter client actually competes, rather than splitting resources across a shrinking base.
Second-order effects
- Other cross-platform social app developers face the same arithmetic — a first-party Twitter app plus a smaller installed base makes BlackBerry the easiest line item to cut, pressuring RIM to justify third-party investment.
- Twitter benefits either way: whether users migrate to its official BlackBerry app or abandon the platform on the device, engagement consolidates inside properties Twitter controls and can monetize through Promoted Trends and sponsored content.
Third-order effects
- If more developers make the same call, BlackBerry's third-party app catalog thins relative to iOS and Android, compounding the platform's consumer appeal problem and pushing RIM's case back toward its enterprise stronghold.
- The episode is an early instance of a recurring dynamic: once a network owner ships competent first-party clients, independent clients survive only where they offer features the owner does not — a bar few can clear on secondary platforms.
The trend: Third-party social clients are consolidating onto iOS and Android, and each exit from a secondary platform like BlackBerry raises the cost of keeping its developer ecosystem alive.