Twitter isn't even in the Top 10 right now. Keep trying to stick up for Elon though.
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Twitter Officially Bans All Third-Party Apps [Update]
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I never understood why Twitter would allow third party apps to display their content and make money off of it. Twitter is not obligated to offer their content to third parties, and it makes no business sense to do so.
Folks can blame Musk for this change, and I am neither defending nor attacking him. But I will note that this change has been underway at Twitter for at least five years, when they killed the APIs it would take to build these kinds of apps in the first place.
I have been predicting the death of these “grandfathered“ apps since then, but the folks who are now quoted in the article above scoffed at the idea that their heads were on the chopping block next.
Twitter has been untrustworthy as a partner for far longer than this. Just ask any of their development community over the last decade. I used to be among them. Never would I trust them again.
I have been predicting the death of these “grandfathered“ apps since then, but the folks who are now quoted in the article above scoffed at the idea that their heads were on the chopping block next.
Twitter has been untrustworthy as a partner for far longer than this. Just ask any of their development community over the last decade. I used to be among them. Never would I trust them again.
So Elon only likes bans when he does them? Got it.
What a circus show all this has been. Wouldn’t be surprised if eventually he’s forced out of Tesla the way Steve was forced out of Apple.
What a circus show all this has been. Wouldn’t be surprised if eventually he’s forced out of Tesla the way Steve was forced out of Apple.
Twitter interface is horrible. Just boicot Twitter. End of story!
If you want to pull the plug on 3rd party clients, fine, your business model, your API, your rules.
But shutting the API for most of them down, with no warning or explanation whatsoever, then a few days later releasing a blatantly false statement saying that "Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working.", then a few days after that telling the truth and announcing that you're killing them permanently and on purpose? That's just flagrantly insulting toward a group of companies and people who have been promoting your service and encouraging use of it from basically day one.
Although Musk seems to be doing everything within his power to bankrupt the company he just bought (he has actually managed to pass Sam Bankman-Fried for the greatest loss of on-the-books wealth in modern history), it's the childish, insulting way he does it that bothers me more than the general incompetence.
Twitter was under no obligation to offer an API like this, it was under no obligation to support 3rd party clients, but the fact that Twitter wasn't monetizing traffic from 3rd party clients was entirely on them, not the 3rd parties, and could have been fixed in a number of ways.
Indeed, people who used some of the non-free clients were demonstrably ripe for extracting more revenue from. They could have, for example, said "You need the $8/month plan to use a 3rd party client" and left the API otherwise the same with no ads. They could have revised the API to serve higher-value ads. They could have charged developers per API client so they were getting a cut of whatever developers were earning off the clients.
But shutting the API for most of them down, with no warning or explanation whatsoever, then a few days later releasing a blatantly false statement saying that "Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working.", then a few days after that telling the truth and announcing that you're killing them permanently and on purpose? That's just flagrantly insulting toward a group of companies and people who have been promoting your service and encouraging use of it from basically day one.
Although Musk seems to be doing everything within his power to bankrupt the company he just bought (he has actually managed to pass Sam Bankman-Fried for the greatest loss of on-the-books wealth in modern history), it's the childish, insulting way he does it that bothers me more than the general incompetence.
3rd party Twitter clients showed what the Twitter API gave them. Twitter of old chose--for whatever reason--not to include ads in what the API spit out.
Twitter was under no obligation to offer an API like this, it was under no obligation to support 3rd party clients, but the fact that Twitter wasn't monetizing traffic from 3rd party clients was entirely on them, not the 3rd parties, and could have been fixed in a number of ways.
Indeed, people who used some of the non-free clients were demonstrably ripe for extracting more revenue from. They could have, for example, said "You need the $8/month plan to use a 3rd party client" and left the API otherwise the same with no ads. They could have revised the API to serve higher-value ads. They could have charged developers per API client so they were getting a cut of whatever developers were earning off the clients.
I apologize , top free news app.
Why am I sticking up for Elon? Perhaps I’m speaking out against this faux outrage.
Elon seems like a childish looser, dont think id wanna ever be in a room with him….but that doesnt mean twitter isn’t the same thing it’s always been. This is just finding a new person for everyone to hate, now that the past ones have run their course.
Twitter should just ban all current and future users and fire all employees. Elon should stay as CEO and the only user of Twitter. That way he will have complete control.
He sure has a lot to say about Apple, but the fact that the API’s were allowed for years, and now they’re upending businesses with no warning? Now who’s creating an anticompetitive market? At least Apple is consistent
The product you bought no longer works but please don’t ask for a refund because it would hurt us financially.
For an indie developer, having 100,000 paid subscribers for your app is more than enough to keep the lights on.
How many of the big services like Instagram, Facebook have large userbases via 3rd party apps? It feels more like it's bringing Twitter in line. It's a pity, but it's the way the web has gone, conslidated into fewer and fewer services with more opaque operations.
From a usability standpoint, Twitter's rolling out features at an unusual pace for such a large service. It makes sense they want all their users getting the most up-to-date and consistent experience.
From a usability standpoint, Twitter's rolling out features at an unusual pace for such a large service. It makes sense they want all their users getting the most up-to-date and consistent experience.
I agree with you here. While I'm pretty upset that Tweetbot is now dead, it never made good business sense to allow these apps to exist without requiring them to display Twitter's ads in their timelines. I was hopeful that such an arrangement would be made so that third party apps could continue to exist and Twitter could still get their fair share of ad revenue.
but but but Elon is in charge there, so everything they do must be bad and stupid and dumb (so it seems many on this forum think . . . they read "Twitter" in the title and then switch into bashing mode, no questions asked).
Twitter lifted that limit some time ago, so those developers could grow their businesses without that artificial limit.
If I were a Tesla investor I'd be screaming for him to be removed from the executive team entirely.
In the 83 days since Musk purchased Twitter, the value of TSLA has dropped by 45%, and in the slightly over 9 months since he started the process TSLA has lost 61% of its value. Although there are many factors at play, Musk's hilarious misadventure in egotistical bad management is most certainly one of them.
I agree with the criticism about the lack of notice and a sunset date but Elon Musk likes to move fast so it's not surprising. People who paid for a third party Twitter app are the exact target market for Twitter Blue. I suspect this will work out for Twitter despite the fallout.
I paid once for Echofon Pro ... and could use it on both my iPad & iPhone w/o paying anything extra beyond the one-time purchase.
That was funnier to me than Twitter's poorly-communicated move. Twitteriffic is basically reselling someone else's service without paying anything upstream, and when the door finally gets slammed on this business model, they still want to keep the revenue. Almost as if Best Buy doesn't pay Apple for the latest batch of iPhones, sells pre-orders anyway, and then asks customers not to request refunds for the phones they didn't receive...
Not so much - I used a third party app. I will NOT pay for Twitter Blue.
You couldn't PAY me to use the stock Twitter app.
Twitter was a hemorrhaging fake business losing untold millions since forever. The business model was more like a pyramid scheme.
Musk is just trying to turn it around.
Musk is just trying to turn it around.
The problem with this is that people were using those clients because the official offerings from Twitter were such cluttered UI nightmares with ever-changing algorithms to how your timeline was presented. These apps were clean, highly customizable ways of navigating Twitter. A Twitter Blue subscription does nothing to provide that same user experience.