It seems like Ryan Sarver, along with the senior and/or PR people who most likely collaborated with him, is trying to channel the tone of Steve Jobs’s “we don't need any more fart apps” speech.
If nothing else, I think it’s advice developers should seriously consider heeding if they want to create value (and generate revenue) using the Twitter ecosystem.
Regarding whether the tone is “hostile” or the message represents “a kick in the teeth,” I think people need to keep some perspective: A hundred and how many million tweets a day?! That's a lot! If I were responsible for the big picture at Twitter, supporting your junior high science fair project Twitter client would not be at the top of my to-do list.
It's hostile because it's purposefully ambiguous. They would catch a lot of bad PR for coming out and stating that they are terminating all unofficial Twitter clients, so they are trying to dance around the bush. There is now a lot of grey area with respect to what is kosher and what is not.
Ironically, it is the ambiguity that is causing so many problems in the first place. It is ambiguity over where they plan to extract revenue that is causing 3rd party devs to choose Twitter-based business models that later threaten Twitter's new revenue model. It is ambiguity in their rules/TOS that is getting 3rd party devs banned (see: Twitdroyd). Etc.
At this point, Twitter needs to realize that the ambiguity isn't helping their PR, its the reason they have a PR problem in the first place.
If nothing else, I think it’s advice developers should seriously consider heeding if they want to create value (and generate revenue) using the Twitter ecosystem.
Regarding whether the tone is “hostile” or the message represents “a kick in the teeth,” I think people need to keep some perspective: A hundred and how many million tweets a day?! That's a lot! If I were responsible for the big picture at Twitter, supporting your junior high science fair project Twitter client would not be at the top of my to-do list.