What Happens When A Twitter Client Hits The Token Limit

*The effective rule, therefore, is even simpler: “Don’t build anything for Twitter.”<p>Exactly, that's precisely the message they wanted you to have.<p>What's wrong with using the twitter.com on Windows8, do we really need a special client just for Windows 8? This is exactly what the web is supposed to do.<p>I don't get anyone is surprised, it's Twitter's ecosystem and if you're duplicating their functionality then it's perfectly reasonable of them to not make any special exemption. If you wrote a client that exposed twitter to new markets or something that added value to Twitter then they'd likely give you a higher limit, but that's not the case...

<i>Twitter: Don't build core-feature Twitter clients, we probably won't approve them.<p>Atta: I built a core-feature Twitter client!<p>Twitter: Sorry, we're not approving your core-feature Twitter client.</i><p>Who is surprised? How is this news? Were you expecting them to not apply their own rules? It seems like a clear-cut case, and concluding "don't build anything for Twitter" is just throwing a temper tantrum.

Sort of amused by the wording in this line:<p>&#62; It does not appear that your service addresses an area that our current or future products do not already serve.<p>How can your future product <i>already</i> serve an area?

I've watched this from a distance with interest. Developers have a special place within the overall Internet ecosystem. As a non developer, everything Twitter has said and done in the last 12 months or more tells me "We don't need a healthy 3rd party ecosystem and we don't want one. Hobbysits can stay filling odd niche requirements and here's our cap. Everyone else though? Sorry" I have no emotion around this as I'm not a developer. I feel as though many developers can't wrap their mind around this concept of not being wanted. They're used to being very wanted initially and then at best still wanted but with a few controlling parameters around activity (see "all App Store/Developer discussions"). I suspect it might be a slightly over exaggerated sense of self importance that's meant it's taken a long time for the obvious to set in. Perhaps that's why Marco only just connected the dots? (as usual I'm not talking about all developers - I've seen many who got it right from the get go)

You know, back before APIs were all the rage, people wrote clients for web services by scraping. Twitter really wouldn't be able to do anything about a Twitter client that pretended to be IE9.

While I've disagreed a lot with a lot of Marco's blog posts, gotta say he's totally right on this one. Actually this is bigger than Twitter, as any new platform that comes out that wants Devs to develop for their API needs to be treated with a certain cynicism: if the platform gets big enough, they'll likely cut you out.<p>I wonder if this trend between FB, Twitter, etc. is going to ruin the ability for new companies and new platforms to attract free development by third parties?

If my salary depended on the Twitter API right now I'd be scared shitless.

It's so sad to watch such a lively lovely service remove the fun by destroying the values that made it great. Meanwhile we are sitting here saying "charge us money, you fools", and they are deaf to us. Twitter: your online site is usability hell, your own clients are dated and painful. Above all we have one question: why? Why are you intent on this path of foolishness based on placing customers and developers last?

Aside from pissing off Twitter, and possibly getting a cease and desist, what's preventing developers from building a translator that sits between Twitter's web layer and their native application client? Couldn't something be developed that loads Twitter into a hidden webview that's locally scraped for the purpose of re-display however the developer pleases on their client? This implementation wouldn't require the tokens, and wouldn't be constrained by their arbitrary limits.<p>But I suppose they'd just wind up getting sued.

Goddamn, I've never seen a clearer example of the colloquial term "butt hurt". Twitter is a company, they built something, they support it, they have the right to control it, and they have arbitrary rights over it. More tellingly, they have a very good point.<p>It reminds me of the craigslist haters, and my response to them. I don't hate craigslist for stopping third parties from using their data because, frankly, it hurts their brand if "druggycriminalroommates.com" starts syndicating their apartment ads.<p>That said, don't think that I'm some sort of right-wing capitalist fascist. No, I don't think everything should be privately owned and controlled. There are some things that should remain public: internet infrastructure being one of them. My personal belief is that the only real egalitarian, open system is one that relies on that infrastructure, and ONLY on that infrastructure. This vision requires that people either a) run their own servers, or b) pay money to someone else to run servers (or parts of servers). (Other possibilities for payment exist, of course, such as bartering information for service, etc.)<p>I mean, twitter is free to control, the OP is free to complain about that control, but the solution presented (don't develop anything for twitter) is ridiculous and immature.

Wait, you mean you can't just wrap someone's service in a fancy UI and then sell it as your own? OH THE HUMANITY!<p>What happened to innovation? All I see these days is a derivative of a derivative of a derivative. Hell even the memes these days are derived from other memes.

I wonder why something like "If you want more than 100k usernames, either pay us $x per username or use our advertisement API and put whatever tweets/ads we push where we tell you to" is not an option.<p>It would be refreshingly honest and for some people/clients it could work, plus it could earn them some of the needed cash.

&#62; Now we know: “work with us directly” means “die”.<p>Very good summary by Marco. It's really annoying when these companies have secret policies that have to be discovered rather than are clearly stated. It just wastes people's time to try to discover the policy, having to do costly time consuming experiments to find out what the policy is as if this was an unknown branch of particle physics.

When you have to find 1500 monthly pay checks, I suppose you have to get the money somehow.<p><a href="http://bijansabet.com/post/35849228202/the-first-photo-the-twitter-team-prior-to-our" rel="nofollow">http://bijansabet.com/post/35849228202/the-first-photo-the-t...</a><p>Found via<p><a href="http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/november/howTechCompaniesGrow" rel="nofollow">http://threads2.scripting.com/2012/november/howTechCompanies...</a><p>Seems a sensible position to me (old guy, non-coder and won't use twitter or fb).

If you build a company around someone else's free API, you're either a high stakes gambler or a moron.

The problem with <i>core-twitter</i> limitation is that twitter's own product sucks and has basic features missing or implemented very poorly...years after launch.<p>This is just shitty all around. Sometimes I wish I could buy 1,000 twitter tokens for some price and use it in some "core-feature" 3rd party app because twitter sucks at implementing the very core features.

This is really idiotic. What are they trying to do? Make sure that all the top users flock to App.net or somewhere else?

I agree with the "Don't build anything for twitter" motto (and it would look good on a t-shirt), but part of me wonders if twitter could get by charging 25 cents a token past 100k, so developing apps is still possible, and twitter still gets its slice of the pie.<p>Although, it still kills the advertising cash cow.

This is the inherent problem with building your product <i>with dependencies on other products</i>. You are tied to their system in such a way that your existence relies on the faith that they keep doing what they do and do not change to a system that blocks you or inhibits your functions.<p>I see the need/desire for hackers to make things useful and unique in a way that they envision things but you will never hear me apologize for my remarks on this subject. If you are building your business or product depending on someone else's and are not a form of contractual <i>partner</i> you can be kicked in the ass down the line and there's no accountability to you they owe.

I liked the Internet better when we had things like irc and news to talk with that weren't controlled by any single corporate entity.

It is surprising that their response does not include a call to action with respect to their business development team. Why isn't there a 'click here to sign up to by a 10,000,000 token' link in that email? Now granted the result might be the same, people not developing for their API but at least they could get value pricing information as part of the transaction.

Now that it has the userbase, it's milking its situation. The talk in the beginning was "How are they gonna make money out of this?" and the answer is gradually unfolding. Kudos to them or starting the way they did, shame on them for closing out the very things that brought them to where they are.<p>Late arrivals like identi.ca might not be as polished, but they offer a similar product, with open APIs. Being based on open and federated standards like status.net, it's extremely unlikely that identi.ca will ever get the ego trip twitter got, and in fact is much more likely that it will be more open over time, and more useful even if other competition arises. What it doesn't have, and what we (consumers as well as devs) can help with, is by heading over there and giving them users and status and content.

I still don't understand why everyone is getting angry about this. It doesn't affect clients made before they introduced the new rule. The only people who get hurt are the idiots who ignore twitter and build a business which uses their API in a way they have said not to.

Not exactly. Twitter doesn't want you to build anything that will take a single eyeball from them. There are still services that can be built that don't fall in that category, though, such as sentiment analysis.<p>At least, for now. Twitter has shown they are willing to be hostile towards their developers. Even if I fit in the "don't take their eyeballs" category, I wouldn't build on their platform because I don't trust them.

How would you compare the Twitter ecosystem to how the Facebook ecosystem is doing lately? Seems that Facebook sign on/identity is doing well. Seems that the Facebook hosted apps are increasingly less relevant than apps just getting sign on and possibly newsfeed flow? Twitter ecosystem seems pretty much destroyed. Tweeting and Facebook newsfeed seem to be doing fine.

I'm amazed we haven't seen some developer say screw it and build thing using Twitters own keys. There have been multiple instances of them being published over the last couple of years, and I'm having trouble seeing what incentive a dev has not to just use them.<p>If you're working against Twitters interest already then why not go for broke?

&#62; that our [...] future products do not already serve<p>wat?

Tweetro should be happy that Twitter is not blaming them for using their platform in a way they prohibit. They want to use what Twitter has worked hard to build, make easy money, and then also want Twitter to spend extra to help them do it (by allowing more API calls etc) - why don't they build something original?

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet that Windows 8 has built-in Twitter integration that works very well.<p>Why do you need another client? Just go to the People Hub and click What's new. Need to reply or retweet? The buttons are right below the message. Need to see mentions or replies? Click Notifications.

So, based on their guideline, if we made and sold Twitter ID BiLLYS which are custom made wooden signs for the or office (and BTW makes for a cool present), would Twitter have a problem with this?

It seems to me this is an issue of pricing. Reach 100,000 tokens with demand to spare? Congratulations, you left money on the table. Charge more next time.

I'd like to see what would happen if a third-party client just started to use the API token extracted from the official client. What could they do?

Does anybody know of any Facebook apps that sort of do the same thing, i.e. recreate the Facebook newsfeed experience for users?

I think some people might call this "biting the hand that feeds you". Or at least the hand that got you started.

I don't understand why people bend over backward and provide also the grease to FB, Tweeter, AppStore &#38; co?

If developers are prohibited to develop apps with Twitter APIs, so why they build the API?

make the twitter api a paid api, and everything will be clearer.<p>Businesses that rely on twitter will have a contractual relationship with twitter , meaning less uncertainty ,less competition ( since you'll have to pay upfront to access twitter's data , less clients ).<p>That's the solution that makes sense , instead of this half baked situation twitter api developers are in.