Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Shuts Down JSON API and Names New CEO
An anonymous reader writes: This month Twitter is closing down the JSON endpoint API which thousands of third-party software and plugin developers have depended upon for years. The alternative Rest API offers data which is aggregated or limited in other ways, whilst the full-featured share data offered by Gnip (purchased last year by Twitter) can cost developers thousands per month to access — in one case up to £20,000 a month. The general objective seems to be to either drive users back to the core Twitter interface where they can be monetized via the social network's advertising, or to regain lost advertising by converting open source data — currently utilized a lot in scientific research — into premium information, offering the possibility for well-funded organizations to gain reputations as Twitter barometers without ever needing to expose the expensive, accurate share figures. The company also announced today that co-founder Jack Dorsey would be the new CEO.
Oh noes! How will I live without access to posts by people letting the world know that they just had a slice of pizza and then took a dump in 140 characters or less.
... nor followed anyone except a couple of friends (not counting all the ones that I constantly get email about for some reason.)
I see less reason than ever to change that.
Where's Gnop?
Yeah... I'm old.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Twits.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
You think people who use Twitter have a life?
BWAHAHAHAHHA
Why not just return an ad-as-a-post in the API?
That is pretty much what happens on the Twitter feed anyway, you'll see an ad somewhere near the top that almost looks like a post.
Just extend that to the API as well.
Somehow Twitter has become a legitimate conduit for celebrities, politicians, terrorists and even nation states. The US Department of State today tweets "Enjoyed speaking with so many young people passionate about environment" (Kerry) even as he is jetting off for the TPP signing that is 100% guaranteed to remove whatever trivial impediments remain to frictionless off-shoring the last of our manufacturing base to whatever seething pollution hell-hole is cheapest this week.
We're governing ourselves with massively multiplayer bullshit propagation system run by bay area grifters.
Maybe they should have tried it the other way round.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
and I don't intend to find out...
captcha: clutter
Almost never used it, and they're about to learn a hard, hard lesson.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
"This month Twitter is closing down the JSON endpoint API which thousands of third-party software and plugin developers have depended upon for years. " This is not only questionable editorializing but a horrifically constructed sentence to begin with.
At this rate, the warnings of Richard Stallman in the past casually dismissed as the ranting of an extremist will soon be commonly held as wise and insightful (though still widely ignored by sheep-like consumers).
My irrelevance to Twitter knows no bounds which pleases me greatly. I am nobody's target demographic.
Fifty years of Yippie! 1968-2018
To see what my citizens are up to in Cities Skylines. #bringbackslashdotbeta
For $20 I'll go stick something to Gnip's windows for you!
For a moment there I only saw "Twitter Shuts Down"
Got my damn hopes up there for a second. :P
LOL ... yeah, whatever.
Twitter's target demographic is people who believe their tweets are actually of any value.
I'm betting an absolutely huge majority of traffic on Twitter is completely pointless and inane ... "I'm going to the bathroom", "the poop is coming out", "meeting Bill and Larry for drinks". That's not "people with a life", that's inane and pointless drivel.
Questioning the value of this isn't about dottering neckbeards, it's about if the platform has much in the way of any real value for most of what it is used for, and also makes us ask "WTF is Twitter valued in the billions for again".
So, maybe all that's really happening is an overvalued company is looking to monetize and leverage synergies, and people who have created products around selling this stuff are getting burned ... the rest of it? Well, I suspect it's at least 22% crap about what those moronic Kardashians are doing now.
"People who have lives" my lily white ass. People who think tweeting means you have a life have no clue.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Looks like we might have a Ferguson chimpout right in Cupertino. Apple had better comply with All Sharptons demands for more social justice and diversity in the ranks. Let's also squander billions of dollars on STEM and "everyone should code" crapola in the inner city where kids are more interested in dealing drugs and spray painting walls. Yes we need more do gooder liberal SJW bull shit.
Born of lazy programmers, fat pipes, and schema-less thinking. Let it die.
(moralistic tirade forthcoming)
**>>BELCH
> People with a life, not dottering neckbeards, are twitter's target demographic.
If you define preteen girls as the people with a life, then it is. I work for a company that makes electronic shopping carts, and added a tweet feature. The vast majority (as in well over 90%) of products that are tweeted are aimed at preteen girls. That is Twitter's target demographic.
I'm betting an absolutely huge majority of traffic on Twitter is completely pointless and inane ... "I'm going to the bathroom", "the poop is coming out", "meeting Bill and Larry for drinks".
This uninformed stereotype of twitter activity is outdated.
The vast majority of tweets today are links and retweets. Live example, I just looked at the 10 most recent tweets in my stream. The first 9 are links and the 10th is a comment about WeChat.
Contrary to the culture provided to you by TV, worshiping money is worse than any main stream Religion. You claim you'd be willing to pay, but you don't pay now and there are plenty of services available. So you worship money and are a liar if we take you at your written word.
Here's the only sentence you need from any of the linked articles:
This affects nobody's ability to retweet their cat pictures. This only affects advertisers' ability to suck data. Someone get out the sad violin.
Perhaps that's what you see. Whenever I check my friends' twitter it's full of bloated shit, comments from ridiculous fan pages (who the fuck actually still cares about harry potter or sonic the hedgehog? Grow the fuck up!), thousands of misinformed posts from mediocre pages. They then also like to follow thousands of "acquaintances", be them friends or not, most of whom cannot write. There seems to be this social contract that it's somehow alright to follow every fucking idiot on Twitter. Twitter's users disgust me.
Twitter is shit. It may be useful as a connective graph for high level people, but for the majority of its population, it is utter shit -- that is because the majority of its active population is teens (or people who should still be teens) with nothing better to do than to scroll endlessly through a newsfeed of shit, thinking they're important (oh, and they also randomly tweet about their "state of mind", what a load a fucking bullshit. I particularly hate people from computer science with Twitter, it's like the opposite -- ignorance coupled with what should be highly logical and knowledgable. Yuck.)
Yeah I know. Probably indicates my circle of friends is to blame. I kinda agree. The worse is that I blame Twitter, in part, for rendering my friends' brain so fucking apathetic and ridiculous.
Nowadays it's in great fashion to be much more meta. People don't comment their turds. They use it as a wall of lamentation. A feed of their insecurities and emotional drivel. Twitter's users disgust me.
I haven't been on twitter in a very long time. But when I was on it, it was just about the time PR firms started hearing about it. Before then, it had been pretty cool. I was following a few people who were local news dispatchers and would tweet out shit that they were dispatching crews to before it ever hit the news. I had some very cool conversations with the local PD chopper pilot via twitter. After the PR firms realized it was a good platform to blast their bullshit out to the world, it went downhill fast. That's when I deleted my twitter account. I presume the majority of twitter nowadays is not inane personal updates but is instead more of the same PR bullshit. "Don't forget XYZ show @ the garden on 10/15!" and the "RETWEET TO WIN MAROON 5 TICKETS!!!"
Still inane, just more advertising and promotion than anything else.
"Hey devs...fuck you ha ha ha ha ha!"
-Signed, Twitter
Personally this is one of those "...and nothing of value was lost" moments.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'm betting an absolutely huge majority of traffic on Twitter is completely pointless and inane ... "I'm going to the bathroom", "the poop is coming out", "meeting Bill and Larry for drinks".
Agreed. Shit like, "Just had the most AMAZING burrito!"
Yeah, like I care about their burrito.
Twitter- Promoting the ADHD Generation Since ummm Whenever"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Then a red balloon floats away
I'm betting an absolutely huge majority of traffic on Twitter is completely pointless and inane ... "I'm going to the bathroom", "the poop is coming out", "meeting Bill and Larry for drinks". That's not "people with a life", that's inane and pointless drivel.
I think you forgot #bm #whatarelief
People trying to make sentences out of hashtags has to end.
I don't know, but it works for me.
You're aware you have no obligation to follow morons, are you?
There's nothing like $HOME
Twitter: Foot. Gun. Aim gun at foot. FIRE!
AKA "ready, fire, aim"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There goes the cool Twitter widgets that are much better than Twitters... Pretty much will end usability like when Facebook cut off APIs and killed all third-party widgets...
You're aware you have no obligation to follow morons, are you?
I don't have a twitter account, so I couldn't follow morons even if I wanted to. :)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"'I'm going to the bathroom', 'the poop is coming out', 'meeting Bill and Larry for drinks'. That's not 'people with a life', that's inane and pointless drivel."
I dunno, it sounds like those folks are enjoying healthy bowel movements and meeting their friends for drinks while you are bitching about a social network on Slashdot. You might be a bit quick to cast the "not people with a life" stone.
So a social media site that everyone thinks they are 'entitled' to is monetizing the service to pay the bills. If everyone jumps ship, then it fails, so what. I'm waiting for all social media like this to fade into obscurity like the pet rock.
IIUC, traffic on twitter has been used to measure the spread of epidemics, so it's not totally worthless.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
your irrelevance than it does about twitter. People with a life, not dottering neckbeards, are twitter's target demographic.
You mean people who only have life if that life is validated by someone else.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
People show up to work at Twitter every day without killing themselves?
Creating the shitty website requires an entire company staffed with fuckheads?
People navigate to twitter.com, sign up, and spend time posting shit nobody reads?
All of these impossible things happen every day?
In your stream. You need to take a random sample of tweets to see how many links and the like there are on average.
Much like Slashdot's target demographic is people who believe their posts are actually of any value.
You can say that about any form of communication. "Speaking is for people who think their words have value". Obvious point is obvious. And 90% of everything is crap, Twitter reflects that. So do Slashdot posts.
You can moderate what Slashdot posts you see by changing the score threshold. And you can moderate your Twitter stream by not following people who post about their fucking bowel movements. Of course, those people don't actually exist outside of your contrived example. Most people just share interesting links they read.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
We've blogged about the infrastructure change that led to this decision https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainable-platform - I'd also point out that as undocumented and unsupported endpoint, probably never a good idea to rely on this data. No plans to change other JSON endpoints on the API.
Disclaimer: I work as a Developer Advocate at Twitter