Mastodawn

Henry Dillon Jan 15, 2023

Third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot and and Twitterrific were critical to the success of Twitter and their users are some of the company's most valuable.

Both deserved better than to have the Twitter API shut off on no notice with no explanation. My thoughts and some history over on @macstories: https://www.macstories.net/stories/twitter-intentionally-ends-third-party-app-developer-access-to-its-apis/

Twitter Intentionally Ends Third-Party App Developer Access to Its APIs

Late yesterday, The Information reported that it had seen internal Twitter Slack communications confirming that the company had intentionally cut off third-party Twitter app access to its APIs. The shut-down, which happened Thursday night US time, hasn’t affected all apps and services that use the API but instead appears targeted at the most popular third-party

@johnvoorhees I love the walk through how historically important these third-party clients were. This really is absurd, and I’m upset about it even though I stopped using Twitter more than a month ago.

Casper 👻Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories
Well, they are now a private company not beholden to anyone and should be treated like the pariah they’re becoming..

Warner Crocker Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories Good piece. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Bud Gibson Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories I think they are certainly valuable to people like you and me, but I think long ago the success of twitter (anemic though it is) switched over to mass adoption of people using the official client. For a while now, you have had to really try as a user of a third party twitter client.

From a technical perspective, the #Fediverse now seems to offer much better opportunity for third parties. What will be the business model?

Sören Jan 15, 2023

@BudGibson @johnvoorhees @macstories I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of “thought leaders” (for lack of better term) were still on third-party clients, and those are now gone for good

Bud Gibson Jan 15, 2023

@chucker @johnvoorhees @macstories Well, I know I am. BTW, I’ve come to the conclusion that twitter is not the future. For a long time, I’ve just used it as a more dynamic RSS substitute, not as a two-way social medium. For now, #Mastodon is more interactive. I’m not sure the model recently introduced by medium doesn’t lead us back down the path to more dynamic RSS substitute for mastodon.

Roger Moore Jan 15, 2023

@BudGibson @johnvoorhees @macstories
Don't underestimate the importance of elite users to the success of Twitter. Probably the single biggest selling point of Twitter is the ability of ordinary users to interact with the elite people they're following. If Twitter drives away the elites, mainstream users will follow.

Bud Gibson Jan 15, 2023

@VATVSLPR @johnvoorhees @macstories It all depends on who your elite is. For tech, those people have made the migration. For journalists, it’s all about audience. For the most part, they have made at best a partial migration.

Roger Moore Jan 15, 2023

@BudGibson @johnvoorhees @macstories
The elite are the people with huge numbers of followers. People like that are the main attraction for the site, and they need tools to manage their accounts beyond what most users need. Forcing them to use the standard tools will make it harder for them to use Twitter and make them more likely to leave.

Paul Stockton Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories very good (and sad) article.
End of 2nd last paragraph should maybe say "is outsized" rather than "in outsized"

John Voorhees Jan 15, 2023

@pauls thanks. Fixed

Shaun Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories the old screenshots make me feel so nostalgic! I remember how much of a revelation Tweetie was when it first came out

Tom Walker Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories "Something Bad Has Happened At Twitter"...

You can say that again

Shaf Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees I agree that was senseless and no real communication is awful! I’m making the jump to here permanently! Tweetbot was one of my favorite clients to use for Twitter

flanker Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories a lot of things Twitter have deserved better than they’ve had recently. Starting with its own employees.

It’s just another desperate and shortsighted attempt by you-know-who to control the narrative and the advertising revenue.

CJ Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories I agree there should have been some warning, and we should have seen something official from Twitter by now, but how much do 3rd party clients contribute directly to Twitter's bottom line? If they drive users and content to Twitter then they're indirectly helping the bottom line, but from what I can tell, Twitter is now just focused on what's directly impacting the bottom line. Driving people to the official Twitter interfaces will have more people looking at the advertising that directly contributes to their bottom line.

John Voorhees Jan 15, 2023

@cj I think I address that in the story. It’s a bigger impact than the numbers suggest. Plus, if you offer an API for people to build a business on top of, you owe them fair warning regardless of their importance to your bottom line.

Chaos Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees Do you have any idea of the usage stats for the apps that were blocked? For example, how many Tweetbot DAU are there that may now become disenchanted with the official app?

Simon 🌻Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories @macstories Absolutely John. The did deserve better. Despicable move by Musk. The worst part as so many have said. is the lack of communication and cutting it off without prior warning. Really feel for the companies involved.

Lukas Burgstaller Jan 15, 2023

@macstories Damn the apps used to look so good before the flattening.

Brandon Butler Jan 15, 2023

@voidstern here here

Ged Maheux Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories Thanks from all of us at the factory for this wonderful piece, John. We’ve been bracing ourselves for the end for years, honestly but to go out this way really is a kick in the teeth for all 3rd party devs. The fact he didn’t just turn it off for ALL clients also hurts. Why?? Just END it! Makes no sense. Appreciate your support as always 💕🖖

John Voorhees Jan 15, 2023

@gedeonm It's very hard to watch this all go down this way from afar, and I can only imagine what it's been like for you and the rest of The Iconfactory team, Tapbots, and everyone else affected, but here we are.

Jeff Clatworthy Jan 15, 2023

@gedeonm @johnvoorhees @macstories I wonder if he didn’t just notice which clients his largest critics used, and capriciously revolved their API access? We know that he’s that petty.

Rob Middleton Jan 15, 2023

@macstories @johnvoorhees loved Tweetbot so this is indeed awful news, though on the bright side very happy that it sounds like they are designing a client for Mastodon!

Ramsey Haddad Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories Do we know that it was intentional/malice? Or is there still a possibility that it was incompetence?

John Voorhees Jan 15, 2023

@rwzh I Trust The Information's reporting on this. They say they've seen internal Slack messages that it's intentional

Ramsey Haddad Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees I guess that's not surprising.
Probably reevaluating things with a shortsighted: "monetize or kill?"

Trauergas Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees indeed 3rd party apps (Tweetcaster and the not twitter owned Tweetdeck most of the time) were the reason why I actually used Twitter. In the earlier days the had features Twitter hadn't, were far more better for my eyes. never had the official twitter app on my phone and used only Tweetdeck on PC.

Alexander (Sasha) Wait Zaranek Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories is this "scorpion bit me" situation? 💔

Kofi Loves Efia

@johnvoorhees @macstories there are some reports that this was an outage and now is over rather than a revocation of privileges. Either way if your business model depends on Twitter being stable... that model is no longer substantially risk free.

Norz Tekh Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees

> #Tapbots is working on a Mastodon client called #Ivory that is currently in beta and should be released soon. We’ll have coverage of Ivory on #MacStories as soon as it’s released publicly.

👀

James Atkinson Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees it’s working now. I just used Tweetbot

John Voorhees Jan 15, 2023

@jimmyjamesuk They swapped in a new API token. I wouldn’t expect it to last.

James Atkinson Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees Ok many thanks.

@johnvoorhees aaaaand it’s gone!

Brennan Stehling Jan 15, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories Related.

David Cohen Jan 15, 2023

@macstories @johnvoorhees Given how Musk has treated his staff, his creditors and his customers at Twitter it is not much of a surprise he shafted API users without notice.

Dani 🍁Jan 16, 2023

@davidbcohen Exactly!

@johnvoorhees i can actually hear the old Tweetbot sounds on that screenshot

The Zan 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪Jan 16, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories I remember when Twitter feeds looked like some of those examples you shared! I don’t believe I ever used twitterific, but I know I did use something that assured follow requests were not bots.

Mathew Fidge Jan 16, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories This was enough for me to deactivate my account. Unbelievable pettiness by Musk.

The Gneech! Awww Yeah Jan 16, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories Well I mean, the entire world deserved better than what happened to Twitter.

@macstories @johnvoorhees well, there goes any chance of third party software for Tesla or SpaceX: no intelligent developer will _ever_ trust a Musk-aligned company again. In fact, I would expect that efforts to hack Teslas will go up significantly in the immediate future.

3dcandy Jan 16, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories It's the end I tell thee.... no not of that service but of old fashioned monolithic free services!

Tom Dewar Jan 16, 2023

@macstories @johnvoorhees One aspect of this I haven’t seen in commentary yet is that, before purchase, those of us using third-party apps were the only segment of Twitter’s customer base who had proven willing to pay for access. A less strategically myopic new owner who wanted to make charging for access a new norm might have capitalised on that.

Dustin O'Chaosium Jan 16, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories This is very disappointing. I had been hoping this was all some sort of technical problem rather than a corporate course change. I'm very fond of Twitterific. I'm not sure I can go back to using the default Twitter app and the constant ad spam. I'm one more step closer to giving up on Twitter completely. Thank you for the heads up.

@johnvoorhees @macstories I started with digital social interaction back in the 90s with a small desktop app called ICQ. It was like yesterday when Blogging became a popular thing with people, there were so many free blog platforms that young generation start owning their blogs as their own platform. Suddenly the word ‘micro-blog’ was starting to sound everywhere and Twitter was the website to do it, but it was a mess, third party apps fix that. They saved Twitter.

@johnvoorhees @macstories if third party apps for Twitter never existed…Twitter will be hanging out with MySpace right now.