Twitterrific has been discontinued

Twitterrific, and a lot of these early iOS clients, really helped defined the Twitter service, and even more so, our interface idioms for mobile apps.<p>Right from the bird’s mouth, which by the way, they created, not Twitter…<p><i>“Since 2007, Twitterrific helped define the shape of the Twitter experience. It was the first desktop client, the first mobile client, one of the very first apps in the App Store, an Apple Design award winner, and it even helped redefine the word “tweet” in the dictionary. Ollie, Twitterrific’s bluebird mascot, was so popular it even prompted Twitter themselves to later adopt a bluebird logo of their very own. Our little app made a big dent on the world!”</i><p>And “pull-to-refresh”? Tweetie.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pull-to-refresh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pull-to-refresh</a>

It&#x27;s hard to overstate how much of an impact third party twitter clients have had on Twitter and the broader mobile landscape - like the post mentions, the word &#x27;Tweet&#x27; and blue bird twitter icon came from third party clients! The Tweetie app invented pull-to-refresh, used by every (both) mobile operating systems.

Recent and related:<p><i>Official Twitter Statement on Revoking API Access to 3rd Party Devs</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34416416" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34416416</a> - Jan 2023 (11 comments)<p><i>Twitter kicking off a developer API campaign on January 16, 2023</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34410624" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34410624</a> - Jan 2023 (107 comments)<p><i>Tweetbot is back down again</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34396664" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34396664</a> - Jan 2023 (210 comments)<p><i>The Shit Show</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34393485" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34393485</a> - Jan 2023 (312 comments)<p><i>Twitter API Page</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34387834" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34387834</a> - Jan 2023 (98 comments)<p><i>Twitter&#x27;s API is down?</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34363743" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34363743</a> - Jan 2023 (408 comments)

I maintain the position I have had ever since Twitter sold people on the ridiculous idea of &quot;API keys&quot;: the correct path has <i>always</i> been adversarial interoperability (as we did back forever ago when people built alternative apps for instant messaging services); if Twitterrific had been designed to use the same API and authority as the official app--maybe as a fallback, if nothing else--Twitter would not have been easily able to kill it... they could try, but it would be a cat and mouse game at best, and the only real recourse they would have would have been to try to detect API abnormalities (which Twitterific could quickly fix, and frankly the skeleton crew at Twitter today likely couldn&#x27;t do well anyway) to directly punish <i>the end users</i> for continuing to insist on logging in with alternative clients (as Snapchat is forced to do); and, while it is easy to just shut off Twitterific&#x27;s API key and tell the users &quot;too bad&quot;, I think having to take the war to Twitterific&#x27;s userbase (as the app would be able to keep working forever, with only momentary brownouts) would be a tougher pill for Twitter to swallow, given that it had way too much marketshare at this point.

This is absolutely humiliating for these 3rd party people. Twitter shows no respect whatsoever for these devs.<p>You wanna shut them down to show more ads? Fine. But at least communicate and let them know upfront. What a sh*t show.

Here&#x27;s the hard truth ...<p><i>Lesson learned</i>: don&#x27;t build your business on top of someone else&#x27;s business, <i>especially</i> if you&#x27;re not paying (under contract) to access that other service.

It’s obviously bad business (for Twitter given the cost &#x2F; benefit) and show’s Elon’s lack of empathy but also demonstrates the perils of having a user like him run the show.<p>He literally couldn’t care about anything that doesn’t affect his own experience of the product. Features, clients, parts of the world, even users - if Elon isn’t interested then it will probably go or be ignored.

&gt; Since 2007, Twitterrific helped define the shape of the Twitter experience. It was the first desktop client, the first mobile client, one of the very first apps in the App Store, an Apple Design award winner, and it even helped redefine the word “tweet” in the dictionary. Ollie, Twitterrific’s bluebird mascot, was so popular it even prompted Twitter themselves to later adopt a bluebird logo of their very own. Our little app made a big dent on the world!<p>Wow they really helped make Twitter what it is today

To be honest, I expect Elon and Twitter will be discontinued at some point, without any good feelings and thanks on the part of any of their customers, unlike the app developers Twitter just killed.<p>What is needed is to do Twitter again, in some way that is more open and supportive of client apps, but still has the immediacy and global search that Twitter has. Mastodon has its uses, but it isn&#x27;t a real replacement. Twitter was always a terrible business, but an incredibly useful idea. The idea needs to exist.

Well just found out most of the people I follow on Twitter are on Mastodon, I&#x27;m out.

Imagine if Elon builds his &quot;x app&quot; where everything about you is stored, your money, contacts, social networks and all of the sudden he wakes up on a random Tuesday and decide that he wants to ban everyone who hurted his feelings the day before.<p>I know him blocking access to third party apps might not be related but it sets a precendent (which already everyone knows) that doing business with him is not safe.

If the issue is that 3rd party clients don&#x27;t show ads, why not just require them to do so? Surely that&#x27;s a better alternative than shutting them down completely.

What are the chances Reddit goes down this path and kills the many amazing third-party clients? I absolutely love the one I use and detest the official Reddit app.

Wonder if they will use some of the IP they&#x27;ve built up to move into the Mastodon Client space. While there is already a nice crop of Mastodon clients, it seems like there is no dominant 3rd party client yet.

There was an opportunity here to open Twitter and position it’s API to become a message broker and discovery service. Have a heathy ecosystem of third party clients. Perhaps require users to have “Blue” subscription to use third party clients with some revenue share agreements.

If I didn&#x27;t know better, I&#x27;d be wondering if Musk was shorting Twitter&#x27;s stock. Has anyone ever managed to do so much damage to a company in such a short amount of time?

Sad times. The third-party clients have always been _the_ way to access Twitter. One of my early favorites was Twinkle, made by Tapulous. It was pretty awesome, and even included searching for tweets from nearby users! This was pretty revolutionary and seriously fun in 2008. It helped us organized some Vancouver &quot;tweetups&quot; in 2008 and 2009.<p>(Of course most recently I had settled on TweetBot, which was an amazing iOS Twitter client)<p>Some stuff about Twinkle, since I didn&#x27;t see anyone else talking about it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20080718210738&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tapulous.com&#x2F;twinkle&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20080718210738&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tapulous.c...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8RSB2MT01BQ">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8RSB2MT01BQ</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Dd4u-E5qmxE">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Dd4u-E5qmxE</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=M_hxXOYIqrQ">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=M_hxXOYIqrQ</a>

This isn&#x27;t the first time Twitter has done this, 3rd party apps used to be massive maybe 10 years ago until they made an API policy change abruptly. IMO the ecosystem never fully recovered from this. One service I enjoyed was &quot;FavStar&quot; which would allow you to find the best&#x2F;funniest tweets or reward people for tweeting something good.

I’m sure it’s been said before but if Twitter wants to get away from advertising, this action seems like such a wasted opportunity.<p>In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t seem all that difficult to have phased in an access fee for the API that’s charged to the app developers. There are lots of ways you could do this.<p>From Twitter’s perspective, they’d get all the advantages of the third party ecosystem while externalising the risk of moving to a paid model.<p>Twitter could have kept the “advertising supported” business to itself, at least for a while, while watching the competing apps settle on a price point.<p>I mean the data this would have given Twitter about monetisation would have been fantastic. And at some point they could have released their own paid version too.<p>Oh well. I suppose Elon knows what he is doing.

It is very sad that mavericks kill good projects for their own benefit.

Are there any open-source options where I can have a non-algorithmic timeline with my own API key?

This is a stretch, but I wonder if Twitter is open to liability for summarily shutting down its third-party API access.<p>Is there any potential upside to suing?

So long and thanks for all the fish, it was one of the extremely few applications that were on my home screen, probably even the application installed the longest.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seirdy.one&#x2F;2021&#x2F;01&#x2F;27&#x2F;whatsapp-and-the-domestication-of-users.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seirdy.one&#x2F;2021&#x2F;01&#x2F;27&#x2F;whatsapp-and-the-domestication...</a>

This really feels like the end of an era. Goodbye old friend!

Why has Twitter shut down the API?<p>Is it because third party clients don&#x27;t show adverts and it is feeling the pinch?<p>Or for some other reason?

is sad to see it go

i&#x27;m glad nitter still works!<p>this sucks overall though.

There was a quite moving exchange between Twitterrific and a customer earlier:<p>&gt; Customer: <i>This makes me so sad. Your iPhone app allowed me as a blind person to use Twitter so much better than the app that they themselves produce. Sorry for the hostility you are receiving from them, but know that you are appreciated for the hard work you’ve done.</i><p>&gt; Twitterrific: <i>Maybe the best thing anyone&#x27;s ever told us. Thank you for this, truly. It is everything. Please take care.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;RustyHilliard77&#x2F;status&#x2F;1616174474029862912" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;RustyHilliard77&#x2F;status&#x2F;1616174474...</a>

&gt; 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.<p>They just documented it. Another after-the-fact policy like @elonjet got.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;twitter-new-developer-terms-ban-third-party-clients-211247096.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;twitter-new-developer-terms-ban-thi...</a><p>&quot;The &#x27;restrictions&#x27; section of Twitter’s developer agreement was updated Thursday with a clause banning &#x27;use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.&#x27; The addition is the only substantive change to the 5,000-word agreement.&quot;<p>Anyone with a shred of empathy would&#x27;ve given devs advance notice of &quot;we&#x27;re destroying your business&quot;.

&quot;Finally, if you were subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple. The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets – not Twitter’s and not Apple’s. To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours.&quot;<p>So a company builds a system that sits on another system to do a thing, charges for a thing, shuts down that thing, and then asks their customers to not ask for a refund for the thing on the thing that is broken...seems a bit....icky

&gt; we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple<p>If I pay for something and don&#x27;t get the promised value why should I be the one who eats it?<p>This is going to hurt the dev but that&#x27;s business and I&#x27;m sure their bank balance is doing just fine. Appealing to the users like this feels unfair.

&gt; 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<p>I understand that many people are angry about recent Twitter changes. This rightly so, because many 3rd party apps are obviously a huge time investment and people have bought apps. This seems unjust.<p>However, with all the recent disclosures about Twitter shadowbanning, deboosting, deamplifying, banning, and viewpoint censoring, I cannot help but feel that Twitter has always been capricious.<p>It is only now that we are recognizing it : the unfortunate reality that a private company controls a defacto public square.