Twitter No Longer Deserves Support From The Developer Community

Twitter (Image credit: Getty Images North America via @daylife)

Previously on Twitter, the community supported service decided that it wanted to control much more of the micro-blogging experience and changed many of the rules around the API. It’s all going to be fine, you can work with us, seemed to be the message that was being portrayed. But the black and white terms and conditions were clear. Twitter clients not sanctioned by Twitter would never be allowed.

Developers could request for the 100,000 token limit to be raised if their software did not clash with a service provided Twitter, but the news today from developers LazyWorm shows that you’re going to need something incredibly niche to get past Twitter.

LazyWorm has developed Tweetro, a Windows 8 client for Twitter. It’s worth noting here that Twitter does not have an official Windows 8 client and Tweetro is gaining critical acclaim. Thanks to their popularity, they’ve reached the 100,000 token limit. Twitter’s reply to their request has been described by lead designer Atta Elayyan to Windows Observer:

“Thank you for reaching out to get clarification on our developer policies. As you know, we discourage developers from building apps that replicate our core user experience (aka “Twitter clients”). We  know that there are developers that want to take their passion for Twitter and its ecosystem to unique underserved situations. As such, we have built some flexibility into our policy with regard to user  tokens – which went into effect September 5th, 2012.”

“…Unfortunately, It does not appear that your service addresses an area that our current or future products do not already serve. As such, it does not qualify for an exemption.”

Well that sums it up quite nicely. Twitter has plans to do something on Wndows 8, so no exception for Tweetro. Short term it means a lot of disappointed fans of the app, and a reduced Twitter experience on Windows 8. Tweetro’s free version will be phased out, and fans will be encouraged to move to the paid version, but that still has the 100,000 limit so it’s little more than a stop-gap. Medium term I would expect Elayyan to support the existing customer base, but it would be very very risky to do any more work on this client. Long term, I doubt that Elayyan and LazyWorm are going to develop another Twitter client.

Twitter can read the internet and the developer scene as well as the next person. Twitter knows the corporate history and how third party support effectively boosted Twitter to the lofty heights it has now reached. And Twitter must know that every developer is going to look at this decision, look at their upcoming projects… and remove Twitter from any forthcoming plans.

Twitter, I hope you know what you’re doing, because from this vantage point it looks like you’re throwing out everything that made you what you are today in an effort to mimic Facebook.

The world does not need another Facebook… it needs the Twitter it helped curate.