Twitter has released details of its long-hinted crackdown on third-party apps that mimic the "mainstream Twitter consumer client experience" in a blog post that sparked both confusion and outrage. In the announcement, Twitter said that developers have six months to bring their apps into compliance with the opaque new API, but left many questions unanswered. While some developers are working closely with Twitter to follow these new rules, other third-party services like Tumblr are speaking out against the new restrictions. Stay on top of this developing situation right here.
Sep 10, 2014
Twitter hopes to play nice with developers at its first mobile conference
After years of drama, Flight could help Twitter start fresh
Sep 20, 2012
IFTTT disables Twitter Triggers in response to Twitter's new third-party app policies
In response to recent changes in Twitter's increasingly stringent third-party app policies, web service IFTTT is removing all Twitter "triggers," which let set up "recipes" to automatically push favorited tweets to Evernote, or crosspost tweets to Google+. In an email to users today, IFTTT CEO Linden Tibbets specifically called out Twitter's new policy of "disallow uploading Twitter content to a cloud-based service" (Section 4A under heading I) that provoked a change. Additionally, IFTTT's quite useful ability to archive your tweets in a plain text file does not abide by Twitter's revised Developer Display Requirements, which mandate that tweets always look like tweets.
Sep 18, 2012
Life after Twitter: StockTwits builds out its own ecosystem
As Twitter transforms from an open web platform to a more traditional media company, startups that built on top of it, like StockTwits, are leaving in search of new ways to grow their business.
Sep 6, 2012
As Twitter API v1.1 rolls out, controversial rules for developers start to take effect
Twitter has released v1.1 of its API and updated the "Developer Rules of the Road" document to reflect the changes.
Aug 23, 2012
Introducing Twitter's new business: Twitter
With "great value" comes "great responsibility" and rather than face up to a platform's responsibility to share value with its partners, Twitter is choosing to cease to be a platform for anybody that might potentially siphon it off. When Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said, "What you’ll see us do more and more as a platform is allow third parties to build into Twitter," it seemed like he was talking about APIs and client functionality. What he was actually talking about was money.
Aug 22, 2012
Tumblr 'truly disappointed by Twitter's decision' to block friend-finding on the blogging service
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.
Aug 22, 2012
Twitterrific developers continuing work on major update after consulting with Twitter
The Iconfactory says it's been working on a "major update" to Twitterriffic for a while, and after consulting with Twitter is confident that nothing will need to be changed.
Aug 20, 2012
Twitter is great, Twitter is terrible: vague new rules leave developers in the dark
Makers of independent apps are scrambling to interpret Twitter's ambiguous new API rules.
Aug 16, 2012
Twitter dictates third-party app form and function in new API, gives six months to comply
Twitter has been broadcasting for quite some time that it would be making changes to the API that developers use to access it for apps and today the company is finally beginning to detail what those changes are. First and foremost, developers who create apps that perform traditional 3rd party Twitter client functions (like Tweetbot) will be limited to 100,000 users total before the developer must get "permission" and/or "work with [Twitter] directly." Current apps will be able to continue to function as normal, however once their "user tokens" double whatever they are today, these new restrictions will apply.
Jul 26, 2012
Twitter blocks Instagram from using its API for friend-finding feature
Twitter has blocked Instagram from using its API to let users find friends through the app.
Jul 24, 2012
How many people use third-party Twitter apps?
In light of Twitter's recent promise to crack down on third-party clients that use Twitter's API to "mimic or reproduce" the original client experience, Benjamin Mayo decided to conduct a rather unscientific study to find out just how many people use those apps.
Jul 24, 2012
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wants 'a world where people build into Twitter,' not off of it
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that the company hopes to become a hub for events, becoming a hub for news and information related to sports events like the Olympics, among other things. Costolo told the WSJ that the company would "soon explain further restrictions," and again dropped hints that should sound foreboding for third party app developers and users. He
Jul 9, 2012
Twitter follows Facebook down the walled garden path
As it focuses on growing its advertising business, The Verge has learned that Twitter plans to move from an open platform towards a more closed off, wall garden approach.
Jun 30, 2012
Twitter portends changes for 3rd party apps, ends LinkedIn integration
Twitter is hinting that it will be changing its policies for 3rd party developers.
