Amazon Shuts Down Lendle.

Hot on the heels of Twitter’s admonishment of third-party app developers, today Amazon put the kibosh on Jeff Croft’s Kindle book-lending community, Lendle.

It’s a troubling trend, to be sure. The only difference is, Amazon was doing just fine before Lendle, and will be fine without it. But where would Twitter be—and more importantly, where will it go—without a vital developer community?

Boy, if my business relied on the good graces of a giant web service and unfettered access to its API, I’d be changing my undies right about now.