Ask HN: Twitter's API future

3 pointsmfalcon2 comments

I'm working at a startup which depends almost entirely on twitter's API. Based on twitter people sayings[0] I wonder what will happen with the API. My opinion is that Twitter won't totally close the API but will migrate towards to a paid access for non personal tweets, and free access to personal tweets.

What do you think will happen?

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IMHO, they'll keep the door open to publishing tweets - i.e.: they want people to be able to tweet from their iphones, from websites, etc. But... they'll close of (1) social network type stuff (your follower and following lists), and (2) close out third party's ability to consume tweets - i.e.: viewing my tweets, or other's, somewhere other than Twitter.

i.e.: the API will be for publishing to Twitter, not consuming from.

I do not think much will change, but if your site/app has heavy API usage you will likely need to pay a commercial fee for API consumption. If this happens it wont be for a while and I wouldn't worry because if they ask you to pay a fee your site/app is probably seeing serious traction. ;)

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