

Ask HN: What is the impact of Twitter's API Limit? - mootymoots

Yesterday Twitter announced a cap on use of their API to 20,000 calls per hr per whitelisted app. This is a low number, and ultimately most of Twitters traffic comes from 3rd party apps.<p>If you run a twitter API based app, what impact does this have on you? Is the restriction specific to IPs of users of the app, or of the app as a whole?
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riklomas
From the API docs:

"If authentication credentials are provided, the rate limit status for the
authenticating user is returned. Otherwise, the rate limit status for the
requester's IP address is returned."

[http://apiwiki.twitter.com/REST+API+Documentation#ratelimits...](http://apiwiki.twitter.com/REST+API+Documentation#ratelimitstatus)

Remember that the 20,000 calls are for GET requests. POST requests don't count
towards that number.

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mootymoots
So does that mean an authenticated user of an application can have up to
20,000 GET requests per hour?

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riklomas
I think it means that the 20,000 requests is for the user/IP that requested
white-listing, rather than all the users of that app. I might be wrong
though...

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mootymoots
which isn't alot really... if you had 2000 users :)

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riklomas
Very true.

I really wish Twitter had an API more similar to Facebook's FQL system. When I
request information from Twitter, there's a lot of excess data that I don't
need and don't use, causing unnecessary load on the Twitter servers.

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mootymoots
Yeah, this is a problem of their own making. Returning data that ultimately,
alot of developers don't need. For example, returning a specific users
follower count requires you to GET a huge XML return.... more specific methods
required me thinks!

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cstejerean
There are a ton of apps out there riding essentially for free on the Twitter
infrastructure. This kind of rate limiting is hopefully a step towards Twitter
charging money for applications that need to go beyond 20k/hour. While they're
at it, it would be nice if they allowed users to buy higher API limits as
well. If I forget and leave Tweetdeck running on two machines (home and work)
I go through my API limit really quick.

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eisokant
I think it's Twitter's first step to monetization of their API.

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lacker
20,000 calls per hour = 5 calls per second. Remember this is either per IP
address or per username. Is that really a low number?

