Twitter's New API v1.1 Seeks To End 3rd Party Twitter Clients For Good

[silverfang77]

Source

Display Requirements: "...linking @usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile, displaying appropriate Tweet actions (e.g. Retweet, reply and favorite) and scaling display of Tweets appropriately based on the device. If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key."

User Token Maximum: "... we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens."

Maximum API Call Limit: "... Most individual API endpoints will be rate limited at 60 calls per hour per-endpoint.... There will be a set of high-volume endpoints related to Tweet display, profile display, user lookup and user search where applications will be able to make up to 720 calls per hour per endpoint."

API Authorization: "... we will require every request to the API to be authenticated."

I can't say I'm surprised. Twitter has shown thinly veiled hostility toward third party apps for a while now, such as with the new OAuth protocol, which was quite an inconvenience for third party app users. Now they bring their hostility into the open and almost plainly state they want third party apps gone.

Well, it is Twitter's own network and service, so they have the right to do it, but as the user of two third party clients (TweetCaster Pro on my Droid 4 and Echofon on Firefox on my laptop), I'm rather dismayed by all this. Why does Twitter care how we access them? The site is free, so it's not like they're making money by us going to the site and using the officials mobile apps, as opposed to if we use third party apps. These moves seem borne of pettiness to me and I hope users of third party apps will raise a hew and cry and tell Twitter that this is a nasty move on their part.