3rd-party Twitter application apocalypse  

Twitter said today after announcing their new API, that developers “should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience” and “any developer who creates an app must work with Twitter and as that app becomes more popular — especially if it’s a "traditional” 3rd party client — Twitter’s rules give the company more leverage over how that app will work.“

You know what that means? 3rd-party applications will have to display Twitter sanctioned ads or essentially cease to exist. Desperate cry for money by forcing revenue to flow into their own accounts? I think so. By taking away the ability to get rid of ads in 3rd-party apps, many developers won’t have motivation to invest in building them anymore.

It gets worse, too.

Developers who create apps that perform traditional 3rd party Twitter client functions (like Tweetbot) will be limited to 100,000 users total before the developer must get "permission” and/or “work with [Twitter] directly.”

Aren’t those numbers nice and vague? What is the definition of a user? How does it work? What does “working with Twitter directly” mean? It’s clear Twitter only wants their applications to be the way into their service, and they’re going to make life hell for applications like TweetBot to exist.

How many users of Twitter actually use the official applications? Millions. And how many use third party ones because they hate the official ones? Millions. Twitter stands to lose a lot of users.

Twitter can’t make their own applications great, so they’re just squashing everyone else. Developers built their applications because the mainstream Twitter experience wasn’t good enough, and it still isn’t.

The platform is burning. App.net, your timing could be perfect.