That makes good sense. It also helps cement a business relationship that would be much more solid than the loose structure in place right now.
After all, who will you complain to if one day twitter decides that tweetminer has to die. Better if you have a win/win and it costs them too if they shut you down.
These 'third party products' on top of other peoples infrastructure are a recent thing, and I have to admit I'm still getting used to it and not really comfortable with it.
A project like that should be called a 'feature', it's not an independent business by any definition, even if it does make money.
The twitter app I built http://tweetarium.com would benefit from something like this. With regards to twitter pulling the plug on third parities, while it is a worry this could happen, it's risk you factor when building on any platform.
If at all possible try to differentiate and make your application work with other ways of exchanging messages (such as IM).
That way you're not completely dependent on just the one platform. Ebuddy is a nice sample of a company that did that right, they started out as single platform and now support a whole bunch of them.
After all, who will you complain to if one day twitter decides that tweetminer has to die. Better if you have a win/win and it costs them too if they shut you down.
These 'third party products' on top of other peoples infrastructure are a recent thing, and I have to admit I'm still getting used to it and not really comfortable with it.
A project like that should be called a 'feature', it's not an independent business by any definition, even if it does make money.