Twitter kicking off a developer API campaign on January 16, 2023
carhenge.club
carhenge.club
https://blog.iconfactory.com/2023/01/state-of-the-twitterver...
Without API we go back to web scraping, Selenium, etc. Now guess which method is more expensive for any company (including Twitter)? Web scraping. Its the entire reason an API started to exist in the first place. Besides, if there is authentication involved, the user is logged in, and API calls can be profiled.
So I would say to your statement: "Definitely not." Only on the short term. And those users you lose you might be able to write off as dead weight or leeches but if a couple of big fish will have impact on the power of the network effect. And once that is reduced, the domino effect might take place.
I'm not influential – I almost never tweet and have almost no followers – but I've read Twitter almost every day for the last 15 years. If I can't use Tweetbot, I'm just going to stop using Twitter. The official client and the website are just not usable for me.
Sure, they haven't been getting any ad revenue from me using a third-party client, so they won't miss me, but they never even attempted to provide those ads to the third-party clients.
This is the situation for me. I haven't been on the platform since this disruption.
Isn't that the whole purpose of an API to send and retrieve content without ads - or any other presentation-layer addition?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1O27Co27g2fWRon7g...
I'd be happy to pay some sort of subscription to the API in order to keep using the third party client. Not sure why this isn't a thing. I'd much rather pay a fe bucks per month for API access than "Twitter Blue" or whatever.
As for the apps: while it's an asshat move, I'd be really careful about building anything commercial on top of anyone else's project without any guarantees about the service even existing tomorrow.
C.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8284398 - my comment from 9 years ago, reminiscing the Twitter API fiasco 10 years ago. Also 8 years ago, as the cycle started anew: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530.
EDIT: I still think the quote there perfectly describes the situation, so I'll repost it verbatim yet again.
* Sovereign from Mass Effect on using someone else's technology
"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays,
our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths
we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You
exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."This is categorically different from what happened before.
This is quite predictable of any service really as I already did predict this [0]. Third-party apps have little to no hope against first party ones even if it is better. [1]
Companies and projects being dependent on someone else's API is inevitable to be shut off, clamped down or rising costs on plans to keep it alive. An uphill battle which the first party can compete against you and shut you down.
Youtube is a lot more adversarial because of all the copyright issues, but there's NewPipe, and yt-dlp as well as all the authorized third party clients like non-Android TVs.
Apollo is a Reddit client for iOS and the major feature it doesn't have from the official client is "Chat". To be clear, you can still send/receive DMs, but the IM chat is not available. For time sensitive events (/r/place) I believe there was support in the official app, but that makes sense not to expose to 3rd parties.
Most other "features" can be recreated by the client independently as long as they have access to your posts/history.
All of that said, I would not hold my breath that this will still be true in 10 years. The only reason that the 3rd party clients are still supported is because Reddit is able to make enough revenue from those users to justify the expense. If/when that changes, so will API access. To their credit, it is possible to spend Reddit coins and give awards via the current API, but you need to use an official client to top up your account. This at least provides a path for 3rd party client users to generate revenue for Reddit directly.
I personally prefer Narwhal on iOS, but if I were forced to use native Reddit app—or really anything resembling ‘new’ Reddit—I’d immediately leave and never come back.
If Apollo stops working, then I assume the other 3rd party apps would also be disabled so then I’m out. I’m a bit too young to have been active during RSS and and IRC days, but I’m exploring what a modern version of that experience looks like in case Reddit goes kaput.
A much easier way for a first party to kill third parties that may be hurting their businesses is buying them out and/or incorporating their functionality into the first party apps.
If users are choosing third party apps it's usually because (a) they are breaking some pretty obvious rules, like copyright and/or not displaying ads, in which case they will be in a constant struggle to survive, (b) they are providing functionality the first party does not or cannot provide, in which case it's still beneficial for the first party since the third party app is helping them keep the users.
[0] - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-chirper/l...
I wonder if there could be a way to handle messages from other systems as a first class message in mastodon while saying on twitter "a discussion about this tweet is happening on Mastodon: _link_".
Its pretty amazing to make Google seem like a beacon of stability, but Twitter managed to do it. I feel for all the developers scrambling to make a mastodon app now in an effort to restart or secure their clients, and wish them luck.
Is anyone doing that? It would be incredibly foolish to believe that people that paid for a Twitter client would suddenly be fine with a paying for a Mastodon client.
I can get a lot more value from a good Twitter client than I can from a good Mastodon client.
It is hard to believe such a big social network to migrate overnight, but it has happened before with digg moving to reddit.
As far as I know, neither of those are an issue on Mastodon and therefore the value of 3rd party clients isn't there.
I hate subs, but I might make an exception here.
This is just a hobby project for me but if it was revenue generating I’d be looking for other platforms rather than starting new projects on such an unstable platform!
Kicking off an API developer campaign mere days after silently killing API access for its biggest users is a VERY bad look. Are you saying that Musk is intentionally trying to make Twitter look like the laughing stock of the tech industry?
Note: I used to say that even though I don't particularly love some of the changes Musk made, I hoped it would turn out ok and that Twitter would survive somehow. But I accidentally cured myself of my Twitter habit (waited a couple of days to see if Tweetbot would regain API access again, never restarted) so I’m just kinda indifferent to it now.
Something can be both. A choice by the company, and also embarrassing.
I don't even understand why you think these might exclude each other mutually.
An easy win-win-win-win for Twitter, partners, users and developers.
What they did was suddenly yank access for a handful of apps then go silent for four days, before sending an email out to API users for (maybe?) a new program which we can’t be 100% sure was part of the plan or just an old scheduled mailer by a now-fired person. We are left guessing because nobody really knows what’s going on at Twitter any more.
If you were subscribed to a free service and they released a paid version, would your choice of paying be affected by the fact that your free account was removed without warning?
What if you had built a business on the free account; would the sudden shutdown of your business affect your decision to build a new project on top of the paid product?
Monetization requires users trusting you enough to pay, eroding lack of trust as you reveal your paid product is a mountain sized red flag.
Even the developer signup process is broken. You fill in the required form, get an email that they need more details about the intended use (despite the fact they already ask about that in the form), and then nobody reads your follow-up emails
I'm assuming this was something designed ages ago and someone forgot to turn it off, but the hashtag they chose for the background of the email-marketing image – #whatshappening – is on point, as I'm sure that's what every developer who uses the Twitter API has been saying.
On the other hand, I see the developer site is back up. If this is indeed a new marketing campaign, it's a brash move.
PS Cawbird still works
[1] It's also impossible to ignore everything else; why would I want to help a service run by a middle aged billionaire edge-lord ?
This is changing the game somewhat, people also are up in arms about google shutting down useful services even when they give many months notice - this is far, far worse.