A storm is brewing following Twitter's announcement of the upcoming changes to version 1.1 of its API - including more stringent rules that put a strangle-hold on third-party developers.
Over the past 18 months, Twitter has been making it quite clear that it would clamp down on apps that mimic its core functionality by throttling its API and bringing what were traditionally third-party features in-house.
Twitter also recently ended its partnership with LinkedIn, and has stopped allowing Instagram users to find their existing contacts on the photo sharing app. Such changes have sparked a number of online protests by developers and users alike.
The latest developer blog post, by Twitter's Michael Sippey, spells out some of the upcoming changes to the Twitter API, which he says are designed to create “a consistent Twitter experience” - and crack down on third-party clients.
Key changes include required authentication on every API endpoint, a new per-endpoint rate-limiting methodology and (most controversially) changes to Twitter's Developer Rules of the Road. The new rules change Twitter's “Display Guidelines” to “Display Requirements” to which all applications that display tweets must adhere.
These requirements include linking usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile, displaying appropriate tweet actions (such as re-tweet and favourite) and scaling the display of tweets appropriately for different devices. “If your application displays tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key,” says Sippey.
Keeping control
Sippey adds that developers needing a large amount of user tokens will be required to work with Twitter directly. “If you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100 000 individual user tokens.
He notes that once an application reaches 200% of its current user count, it will not be able to add additional users without Twitter's permission.
According to Sippey, developers will have six months to migrate their applications to the new version of the API and to comply with the new rules.
Sippey says the new API guidelines are aimed at encouraging developers to focus on areas such as business applications and analytics rather than traditional Twitter clients and syndication. Twitter is also encouraging developers to build new ways to use Twitter Cards (multimedia boxes that can be displayed inside tweets) rather than repurposing Twitter content.
Unstable, unpredictable
While it has been long-anticipated that Twitter would harden its stance against third-party clients, questions have been raised regarding whether developers, who have been integral to the growth of Twitter and its ecosystem, will continue to invest in the platform.
Creator of Instapaper Marco Arment has publicly voiced his concerns about the new API changes. Referring specifically to the requirement that applications with large user bases will have to work with Twitter, Arment says this essentially translates to saying: “Once you get big enough for us to notice, we're going to require you to adhere to more strict, unpublished rules to make sure you don't compete with us or take too much value from our network.”
Arment argues that the new rules continue to tighten, permitting developers only to add value to Twitter without being able to get as much value out of it. “Many users of Twitter's platform compete with Twitter on some level. Twitter doesn't need a lot of its nontrivial apps, and in fact, they'd be happier if most of them disappeared.
“Twitter has proven to be unstable and unpredictable, and any assurances they give about whether something will be permitted in the future have zero credibility.
“I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore. And if I were in the Twitter-client business, I'd start working on another product.”
App.net alternative
As dissatisfaction with Twitter has grown in the developer community, one entrepreneur from San Francisco, Dalton Caldwell, is pushing to create a new service that will be “what Twitter could have been”. The start-up, App.net, has already received over $600 000 in funding.
According to Caldwell, Twitter has made a mistake by choosing to monetise the platform through advertising rather than building it around its real-time API.
“If you are building an advertising/media business, it would then follow that you need to own all of the screen real-estate that users see. The next logical step would be to kill all third-party clients, and lock down the data in the global firehose in order to control the 'content',” says Caldwell.
App.net will be an open, ad-free network funded by users (who will pay $50 a year for basic access) and developers (who pay $100 a year for API access and support). The join.app.net site states: “We're building a real-time social service where users and developers come first, not advertisers.”
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