The thing is, though, that the value of these APIs is largely driven by the userbase, and the most valuable users tend to use third-party clients.
Now, I'm not surprised to see _Twitter_ doing this, because it's just one of a laundry-list of ideas that Naughty Old Mr Car has to make Twitter worse; it really barely registers. But _Reddit_, I would have thought, would be a lot more conservative in the "massive dangerous change" department, particularly after what happened to Digg (and more generally the history of internet forums). I'd expect that there's a huge danger for them here that the big third party apps will simply endorse a Reddit clone.
Now, I'm not surprised to see _Twitter_ doing this, because it's just one of a laundry-list of ideas that Naughty Old Mr Car has to make Twitter worse; it really barely registers. But _Reddit_, I would have thought, would be a lot more conservative in the "massive dangerous change" department, particularly after what happened to Digg (and more generally the history of internet forums). I'd expect that there's a huge danger for them here that the big third party apps will simply endorse a Reddit clone.