In-case you didn’t already hear, Michael Sippey of Twitter has just announced drastic changes to Twitter which will affect pretty much every single decent 3rd party app that uses the Twitter API. Essentially what Twitter have done is taken a 10 inch piece of steel and rammed it as hard and far as it will go right up the anal passages of the very developers who have contributed to the success of Twitter.
The question is why, but the answer is simple: Twitter is tired of third party app developers showing up their service by offering better ways of Tweeting. Is Twitter forgetting it’s official app was once upon a time a third party app too? It’s Twitter’s platform so they’re free to enforce whatever guidelines they want, but will this move have an averse affect?
It seems kind of ironic that Twitter announce such drastic changes around the same time Dalton Caldwell’s paid Twitter alternative App.net has been generating a lot of buzz of a more developer friendly service that won’t fuck third party developers over like Twitter has proven time and time again it loves to do.
Basically if you operate a traditional third party Twitter client like Tweetbot you will be limited to 100,000 users total before the developer must get permission and or work directly with Twitter to work beyond the restriction. Other changes include the introduction of display guidelines in which a Tweet and or Twitter markup must be displayed and function in a particular way. To be honest developers have known for a long time this would happen, it’s just a shame Twitter have chosen to follow-through with it all.
This kind of move wouldn’t be nearly as bad if Twitter offered a decent client, but they don’t. This is an asinine move on Twitter’s part, one that won’t end well for them. If you’re in the business of using Twitter’s API for your business, I’d seriously consider another service and or business idea.
