Twitter Restricts Client Developers 96
New submitter atsabig10fo writes "Twitter has finally released the hinted-at changes to their API, which include limiting the number of users for third party clients, per-endpoint rate limiting, and restrictions on how tweets can be displayed and posted. Twitter's Michael Sippey wrote, 'One of the key things we've learned over the past few years is that when developers begin to demand an increasingly high volume of API calls, we can guide them toward areas of value for users and their businesses. To that end, and similar to some other companies, we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens.' Third party app developers are certainly going to be sweating these changes, and it puts the future of new development in question."
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
"...we can guide them toward areas of value for users and their businesses..." = we can charge you money
. "To that end, ...we will require you to work with us directly..." =
therefore, we will charge you money
Re:*In a blandly chic conference room* (Score:2, Insightful)
"Hey guys, I have been thinking that maybe we need a way to prevent clueless developers from DDOSing us with their client." Is probably more it.
Re:RIP Twitter, 2006-2012 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why someone hasn't built a Twitter clone that just runs on top of IRC. Twitter is in many ways web IRC already.
Simple. You can be assurred that 99.999% of Twitter's users don't care in the slightest about this, and the value of Twitter is its user base.
Its the exact same reason none of the "free" social networking projects have made even a tiny blip in the public awareness, and will never overtake Facebook.
Twitter and FB have done something that MySpace never did -- transitioned out of a finnicky group of users (kids who try new things all the time) and got broad usage among the pool of people who don't. (Adults who have better things to do with their time then chase the latest trend.)
Could have been thought through better (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, if you build something like TweetBot (or Tweetie, which is now Twitter's official mobile client!), you can't get bigger than 100,000 users. So no point in spending time building a better Twitter client: if it's good enough to get used, it can't get used. This seems ... counterintuitive ... if your goal is to have a successful platform.
It does give clarity. It clarifies that Twitter is angering the very developers who are both motivated and capable of building a system to replace it. Also, this means that client innovation (the same innovation that brought hash tags, @ references and tweet discovery) will slow dramatically, which in turn opens up niches for competing services to capitalize on.
All in all, this smells like a huge error on their part.
2 - 2 = 4? (Score:5, Insightful)
Alright, so this is the part that baffles me:
Nearly eighteen months ago, we gave developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience." And to reiterate what I wrote in my last post, that guidance continues to apply today.
Ok, so developers need to do something to differentiate. Got it.
We will require all applications that display Tweets to adhere to these [twitter.com]. Among them: linking @usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile, displaying appropriate Tweet actions (e.g. Retweet, reply and favorite) and scaling display of Tweets appropriately based on the device. If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key.
Right! So developers shouldn't build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter experience - and instead they should differentiate by building apps that adhere strictly to the UI requirements. These requirements provide explicit detail as to how to create a client that mimics and reproduces the mainstream Twitter experience.
Wait, how's that again?
Never stand on shoulder of midgets. (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is why you should never base your business model atop someone else's product. Because that way your always at their whims.. I would only consider building atop another system if your life cycle (development and bringing to market ) is measured in months, and you have an exit plan ready to go.. otherwise get ready for restrictions once root company actually needs to make money and satisfy investors...
Re:With respect to Spinal Tap (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not make several applications? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not going to work. Web scrapers break when you make the slightest changes to the way the web page is delivered.
If Twitter notices a lot of scraping going on? Tweak the page slightly. Then 573 scraper developers have to update their code. How many times will this happen before they give up? I'm betting not many.
I'm extremely pissed off at the way Twitter is trying to push away third party clients. TweetBot is AMAZING, and FAR superior to Twitter's own client. If they put as much effort into developing their client as they are restricting the API and whining about this, it could probably better. But of course they don't.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)