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2012

Twitter’s New API Guidelines Spark Online Protests

August 22, 2012 0

Los Angeles — In an attempt to regulate how users access its micro-blogging service, Twitter APIs are up in arms about Twitter’ new Rules of the Road for APIs. The micro-blogging outfit has sparked outrage as it announces plans that sternly discouraged independent software developers from creating Twitter apps that use its messaging platform.

Twitter announced the new rules late last week along with some strict new requirements for developers who leverage the micro-blogging service’s API seems to have — putting it lightly — made a few people angry. Mashable was the first to take notice, citing CEO of Box, Aaron Levie’s, recent tweet, “Twitter’s API has more rules than North Korea.”

As a matter of fact, the company has tightened its grip on similar apps that rival its branded one. Though many people are pretty dismayed, and even initiated an #OccupyTwitter protest forum, some are understanding of the limitations. One of these is the CEO of TweetBot, Paul Haddad said, “The sky is not falling,” explaining that though he wishes there was no cap, that the “current cap is pretty huge.”

The new restrictions limit applications recreating the traditional Twitter experience (think Echofon or Tweetbot) to 100,000 users. Hence, developers now writing for other websites have to recode their apps to mimic the Twitter look, and no new app can sell to more than 100,000 users. After that, Twitter gets involved.

Pouring out their displeasure, the creator of Klouchebag, Tom Scott, wrote a blog post on Friday explaining exactly what he thinks of Twitter’s new rules. Particularly, he targets Twitter’s desire to start “squeezing out third-party Twitter clients” and requiring a “Sign-in with Twitter” button for web services that use Twitter’s API.

“For me, the immediate effect of this is that my Klout parody Klouchebag, along with a few other things I have designed, will die,” Scott wrote, though he thinks the little blue bird will survive.

Manton Reece is an ardent user who has written apps to provide services that the company does not, like archiving tweets.

Reece said people like him helped build the site. “A lot of us would never have been on Twitter in those early days if these apps were not there. And to see Twitter turn their back on some of these developers that really propped up some of the early users and got people excited about using Twitter is a little bit disappointing.”

In fact, Reece said the new rules guarantee that Twitter gets more traffic to its site, and therefore more advertising dollars.

“We have a healthy business strategy that has been going very well,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a phone interview. “The decision is not about protecting ad revenue.”

Lately, the micro-blogging hub, which has been seeking greater control of its platform as it looks to expand into a digital media powerhouse sustained by advertising revenues, has deeply divided Silicon Valley’s tech circles with its strategy.

Now with its growing ambitions, no longer just a 140-character, text messaging service, Twitter hopes that it can seamlessly provide more interactive content — and better serve ads and measure their performance — if the vast majority of its users use officially sanctioned programs to log into Twitter. But that approach has riled many software developers as well as users, many of whom favor independent clients like Hootsuite, Uber and Tweetbot over Twitter’s own products.

However, despising the move, Nova Spivack, CEO of Bottlenose.com, has a different opinion on the future of Twitter. Mainly, he does not think it will survive without the third-party developers that helped it flourish. One of the first to start using the occupy hashtag, Spivack has created a petition via Change.org to convince Twitter to maintain its promise to be open source.

Currently, the petition has 838 supporters with 162 needed. The petition begins with a plea for Twitter to rethink its recent decisions:

“We, the undersigned, urge you, Twitter, not to betray the trust and goodwill of your ecosystem of millions of developers and users. And we urge you to clarify your intentions for your APIs and the huge ecosystem of third-party apps and services that rely on these APIs to connect to Twitter, right away.”

Well, going forward, only time will tell whether the petition will gain any traction and get Twitter to take notice of the disgruntled tech community that helped it grow and like Spivack writes, perhaps Twitter is simply becoming a “scary bird of prey.”