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Twitter Restricts Client Developers
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."
and should not the new icon for Twitter here be a bird in a cage?
"Hey guys, I've been thinking that maybe we need some new ideas on how to make our product less popular. Yeah, I know that we have to contend with network effects and a fairly strong first-mover advantage; but so did Myspace, we can do this, people! The service we offer is technologically totally fucking replaceable, and its continued viability depends on a pleasant UX for all the non-bots in our subscriber base."
"Say, your mention of UX gives me an idea... What if we were to start fucking around with the 3rd parties who produce the most popular interfaces to our product? If I remember, AOL's endless game of cat-and-mouse over OSCAR clients totally helped them retain relevance in the IM space..."
"Man, that is Genius! If we do this right, the name 'twitter' will come to mean 'Just like xmpp, only far less versatile and run by assholes' within the month. Get to it!"
"...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
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. 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?