Last week, Twitter updated its developer terms to effectively ban any alternative Twitter client application. The company’s change came after many popular apps — including Twitterrific, Tweetbot, Echofone, and Fenix — were suspended by the company’s developer platform team without any notice or explanation.
The social media company hadn’t been transparent about its decisions to shun third-party clients, only saying it was enforcing “long-standing” rules (which it then had to rush to document), making developers distrust the platform even more. While Twitter has had a rocky relationship with app developers for years, third-party clients have contributed to many critical features that are core to Twitter’s experience today.
Below, we’ve rounded up some examples of how the work done by third-party apps became an integral part of the social network:
As the era of third-party apps comes to an end, with some companies publishing angry blogs or other eulogies, Twitter owner Elon Musk claims he now wants to make Twitter an “everything app,” (aka a “super app.”) But given Musk’s treatment of the developer community, the opportunity to source future ideas from the Twitter app ecosystem is now lost to the company, which could hinder future developments.
Source @TechCrunch
