If you’ve noticed apps like Twitteriffic and Tweetbot stop working, it wasn’t an accident. In one fell swoop, third-party apps for Twitter went offline earlier this month, rendering the efforts of many developers futile over the years and their loyalty to the company shaken.
It’s another line in the story of Elon Musk owns the social platform since late 2022, where a number of decisions have either been heavily criticized or reversed, apparently depending on how he was feeling that day.
That decision could be one of the worst, however, as it quickly shattered any developer goodwill for the platform, and all the company has done to acknowledge this is an unnecessarily mysterious tweet that you can’t help but shrug off believe he comes from a soap opera.
Out of frustration comes innovation
Twitter is enforcing its longstanding API rules. This can cause some apps not to work.January 17, 2023
Above is the tweet, which raised even more questions than the purpose of acknowledging that these third-party apps have limited access to Twitter.
For the sake of transparency you would normally expect to see a web link to a support page explaining the rules and the reason for this conclusion – but there is nothing. It’s a slap in the face for developers who have worked tirelessly on their own Twitter apps to give users choices in how they read their feed and compose their tweets, but are now forced to use an official app , which has become more unstable since Musk weeded out the platform’s workforce, causing teams like the press team to no longer exist.
Once again we have to scratch our heads and wonder if we’ll see another tweet in the near future either to reverse the decision or in more cryptic tweets like a 2008 Facebook status with a big “I will.” in the inbox” explaining you hun’ vibes.
It’s a great shame to see one of Twitter’s greatest assets, both in terms of goodwill and innovation from outside the company, suddenly burst into flames. It’s in no way the way of doing things. From the playground to the meeting in the office, just not.
But that also inspires the alternatives, such as Mastodon and even Instagram. Icon Factory, responsible for Tweetbot, now turns its attention to a Mastodon customer named ivory (opens in new tab). It’s already looking great and hopefully the platform will appeal to more users over time.
That’s the only positive thing to take away from all of this – but it shouldn’t have ended like this.
