Dead to Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Fenix and all Twitter alternatives
It’s over for third-party Twitter clients. The social network has simply changed its rules so that there can be nothing but the official application. All other programs are suddenly suppressed.
This time the carrots are cooked. Unofficial applications to Twitter are doomed to disappear, even if they contribute greatly to the social network. On January 19, 2023, Twitter updated its rules against developers and things are now written in black and white: designing software similar to official Twitter apps is prohibited.
In particular, those using the Twitter programming interface (API) are “prohibited. Create or attempt to create a service or product that replaces or is similar to the Twitter applications “. Access to the API is required to “connect” to the social network’s servers, thereby reading and writing tweets from another program.
The result of these new rules? All third party apps will die. Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Fenix, Talon, YoruFukurou, Echofon, and others will virtually disappear in January 2023. Most of them were already unavailable as of mid-January with initial access restrictions. Since then, the silence of Elon Musk’s teams has been strongly criticized.
That silence was broken on January 17, five days after initial reports from alternative programs and their respective communities. A message on the Twitter Dev account warned that the API changes would cause apps to crash. In doing so, Twitter was confirming a targeted action against its own ecosystem.
“Today is the end of an era”
Among the victims of this new policy, the modification has not yet been widely interpreted. The Twitterrific and Fenix accounts have not been updated since January 17th. This is the case for the accounts of the developers behind the projects. Others started talking like Twitterrific and Talon.
” Today marks the end of an era. Unfortunately, we have had to remove Twitterrific from the iOS and Mac App Store. Twitter’s inexplicable termination of our API access left the app without a future », Twitterrific wrote. ” Twitter clarified its position. […] Unfortunately, this will cause Talon to stop working. », Talon action.
Twitter’s brand image is tarnished by this sequence if the company engages with its ecosystem. The new rules addressed to developers only start from January 19. However, the official Twitter Dev account announced on January 17 that it will implement a long-term policy… the latest rules are updated It was dated October 10, 2022. And at that time, there were no restrictions around third-party applications.
The main reasons behind the few appeals to the cemetery were not disclosed by Twitter. However, many believe that this is an attempt to centralize all Internet users in a single application – the official application – in order to show more or less personalized ads to those who are not yet there, and to better identify them with algorithms. We’re also seeing a way to sell Twitter Blue subscriptions, which are only available on the official app.
The end of third-party apps marks the end of an era at Twitter. It was these developer communities that allowed the social network to become popular long before the official program (for example, Twitterrific was launched before the App Store thanks to the jailbreak). Late in the smartphone era, Twitter also acquired Tweetie, a third-party client, to make it an official app. By suddenly abandoning alternative applications without thanking them, Elon Musk ignores the history of his property.
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