ThinkUp’s service provided users with a feed of “insights about your Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts,” according to the tool’s website. Users could opt for a daily email, too. The service operated under a subscription model of five dollars per month, as Trapani and Dash chose not to sell ads or collect data on their customers. ThinkUp lost some functions in an update in response to a tightening Facebook API in April 2015. This week, Instagram made similar changes, and Twitter has announced it’s intention to tweak its API in the fall. Dash’s announcement explained the reasoning behind the move: Dash’s post holds a prediction that, given Trapani and Dash’s prominence in the tech community, warrants a closer look: He claims that any analytic tool, not just ThinkUp, will face debilitating challenges from the seemingly arbitrary API changes of major networks. Why not sell ThinkUp to a bigger company that could pay to keep developing it? Because, in short, it may not be possible for anyone to build ThinkUp’s features on top of the major social networks.” Moving forward, we may see more analytic tools shutting down as social networks become more opaque despite their growing power. Image: YouTube
