The fun and games are over. Even the internet’s got to make a living

A collective grumble went around the web in September when Twitter launched its new API, the application programming interface where other apps and web sites talk to Twitter to get its data. The main gripe is that Twitter is accelerating the closing down of channels responsible for its rise in the first place by effectively locking out many of the third-party tools used to access the service. Hardly the first to roll up the welcome mat to other developers’ apps to focus on its own services, Twitter’s move nonetheless may have been the start of a larger shift from “the fun web” to “the serious web,” or in business terms, from the “free Web” to the “internet of cha-ching$.”