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Tumblr 'truly disappointed by Twitter's decision' to block friend-finding on the blogging service

Tumblr 'truly disappointed by Twitter's decision' to block friend-finding on the blogging service

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Tumblr is the latest company to be directly impacted by the strict guidelines in Twitter's new API terms. The company has abruptly removed Twitter from its "Find people you know" section. The page — which appears during the account setup process — previously scanned your Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter contacts, matching them with users on the Tumblr microblogging platform.

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Tumblr Twitter API
Tumblr Twitter API

Tumblr is the latest company to respond to the strict guidelines found in Twitter's new API terms. As spotted by Matt Buchanan, the site just abruptly removed Twitter from its "Find people you know" section, which previously scanned your Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter friends/contacts, matching them with users on the Tumblr microblogging platform. Now only the former two services remain.

Instagram was forced to take similar action last month, axing Twitter from its own friend-finding capabilities after the massively popular photo app was blocked from utilizing the necessary APIs.

Neither company has explained the reasons behind this most recent change, but the timing certainly suggests a direct link to new policies that dramatically alter how third parties can interact with the Twitter service. We've reached out to both Tumblr and Twitter for comment on the situation.

Update: Tumblr has reached out with a statement that places the blame squarely on Twitter for cutting off access to the feature, going so far as to point out that while Twitter isn't playing ball, Facebook and Google are happy to continue supporting friend-finding on the service. Apparently, participating in Twitter's new "Cards" program for display tweets wasn't enough, either:

To our dismay, Twitter has restricted our users’ ability to "Find Twitter Friends" on Tumblr. Given our history of embracing their platform, this is especially upsetting. Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets, and we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter's first partners. While we're delighted by the response to our integrations with Facebook and Gmail, we are truly disappointed by Twitter's decision.

Twitter had no comment on the decision, but its comment when the Instagram change went though probably applies equally to this situation: "We understand that there’s great value associated with Twitter’s follow graph data, and we can confirm that it is no longer available within Instagram."