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Tag: Twitterrific

  • Twitter Officially Changes TOS to Ban Third-Party Clients

    Twitter Officially Changes TOS to Ban Third-Party Clients

    Twitter has finally broke its silence — sort of — on why third-party clients are not working, changing its TOS to ban them.

    Twitter caused an uproar when popular third-party clients stopped working without explanation. Twitterrific even shut down as a result, saying that’s Twitter’s complete lack of communication on the issue made it “a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.”

    In the aftermath, Twitter has finally clarified, although not in an official announcement, press release, or anything else that would help the company save face. Instead, it has quietly updated its TOS to ban third-party apps.

    The relevant portion specifically bans “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”

    Clearly, the platform views third-party clients as a threat to its advertising revenue, since many of them do not display ads, and is well within its rights to make such a change.

    Nonetheless, the company should have informed developers of the change, rather than making it unannounced and leaving everyone in limbo.

  • Twitter API Changes Kill Twitterrific

    Twitter API Changes Kill Twitterrific

    The Iconfactory has announced it is discontinuing Twitterrific following a Twitter API change that killed the app.

    Users began noticing in mid-January that some of their favorite Twitter clients were no longer working, with at least one developer confirming the issue. At the time, no one knew if it was an accidental error with the Twitter APIs, or if the platform was targeting third-party clients. Ultimately, it proved to be the latter and Twitterrific is the first confirmed victim.

    In a blog post announcing the app’s demise, The Iconfactory makes clear that they did not want to end support for Twitterrific, but that they have no choice given Twitter’s complete lack of communication on the matter.

    A sentence that none of us wanted to write, but have long felt would need to be written someday. We didn’t expect to be writing it so soon, though, and certainly not without having had time to notify you that it was coming. We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.

    Those sentences speak volumes. An app that has existed since 2007 is forced to shut down because of an unannounced and undocumented change. What’s more, the company behind the app says it no longer views Twitter as trustworthy.

    The news is also further evidence of the abject failure that has been Elon Musk’s tenure. Under his leadership, the company has refused to honor its rental agreements, suspended journalists’ accounts for posting critical articles, laid off thousands of employees, repeatedly threatened bankruptcy, and now helped kill one of the oldest Twitter clients without even bothering to explain why.

    Musk may have once been Silicon Valley’s golden boy, but the mercurial CEO is adding another skill to his resume: showing how NOT to run a company.