
Twitter delays shutdown of legacy APIs as it launches a replacement - Garbage
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/16/twitter-delays-shutdown-of-legacy-apis-by-3-months-as-it-launches-a-replacement/
======
swang
A reminder: "Jack Dorsey apologizes to Twitter developers for chasing them
away"[0]

Not. Even. Three. Years.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..

0: [https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9586084/jack-dorsey-
twit...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/21/9586084/jack-dorsey-twitter-ceo-
apology-developers)

~~~
swyx
wow. i was actually considering making a twitter client for my own use (and
maybe others). but given how hellbent Twitter is on making life difficult for
third party devs I have no confidence in this. also: $339/month for more than
15 accounts? come on. We're not all Twitter, Twitter.

------
IB885588
I love Tweetbot, I love that it syncs between iOs and Mac. I like having a
chronological timeline, I love that it keeps where I am in the timeline, I
like the interface with the side swipes, etc.

This is a terrible move by Twitter. It might be a relatively small number of
users, but it's mostly power-users and super-fans, and this needlessly hurts
them.

If Twitter wants to make more money from them, just add ads in the third party
stream. Don't try to kill third party apps.

~~~
f1nch3r
When they announced the changes a while back I did a personal test and
switched to using the Twitter website and their app on the iPhone. Outside of
not showing ads, I think I know why they want to do away with 3rd party
clients. 3rd party clients have them beat by a mile when it comes to ease of
use. I don't think they can, nor want to compete with that. They'd rather show
me what they think I want to see, rather than what I actually want to see. I
just can't help feeling like my days on Twitter are numbered, which is sad
having been on there for ten years now. I'm just not their target anymore.

~~~
uptown
"They'd rather show me what they think I want to see, rather than what I
actually want to see."

I think it's actually that they'd rather show you what _they_ want you to see,
rather than what you actually want to see. This includes promoted content.

~~~
f1nch3r
I'd agree in part. Outside of promoted content, they also try to force "things
I might have missed" on me. I never want to see this. I browse in
chronological order and will see it without their "help".

~~~
kpwags
I'd be happy with a feed that is in chronological order, even with ads &
promoted tweets, so log as it does not include:

\- "what I missed"

\- follow recommendations

\- the likes of who I follow - show me their retweets, not their likes

------
donatj
Since Twitter killed Twitter for Mac, my Twitter usage declined 80%.

I switched to Tweetbot but still never liked it. I’ve been hoping a nicer
client would come along.

The reason I used Twitter as much as I did was that it’s client made it super
convenient while working to just open with a keyboard shortcut for a couple
seconds, poke around and then hide again and get back to work.

Forcing me to the website means I have to actually think about using Twitter;
I have to interrupt what I am doing, rather than being a reflex. It means
they’re killing most of the other 20% of my usage.

I really think they’re throwing the baby out with the bath water here.

~~~
phero_cnstrcts
Yep. Basically haven't used twitter actively since the app stopped working.

Before it was always at a reserved spot on my 2nd screen.

I kinda miss it - but not enough to open a tab in my browser and log in.

------
matt4077
I have absolutely no problem with Twitter trying to earn money. I just don't
get how they are trying to do it?

When I'm reading my Twitter timeline in Twitterific, I'm not seeing ads. Which
is probably why twitter wants me to use their website.

But why don't they just require third-party apps to show paid tweets? IIRC
it's not even possible currently, because ads don't show up in their API
output.

It seems insane to stymie the universe of alternative CLIENTS when what you
contrl is the MESSAGES.

~~~
eugeniub
Impressions are an important ad metric. How can you trust a third party app to
accurately measure impressions?

~~~
testplzignore
You could contractually require it, and verify it with random sampling on the
client apps. If a Twitter employee views a tweet on the third-party app and
Twitter doesn't get an impression notification, then there is a problem.

~~~
JohnBooty
Seems practical. They already have an army of content moderators responsible
for millions of feeds. Having them spot-check several hundred or several
thousand third-party clients once every month or two doesn't seem like a large
increase in their workload.

I mean, that's a single full-time employee (or less). If there are 2000 third-
party clients and the goal is to spot-check them once per month, this
hypothetical full-time employee would need to check 80 of them per day. That's
one spot check every six minutes for eight hours a day if they work 25 days a
month.

Not exactly the most exciting work, but easily doable. And that doesn't need
to exactly be a highly paid employee either. I believe the big social media
companies offshore a lot of that grunt work to other countries.

So we're talking what, thirty or forty grand a year for Twitter to implement
that?

------
bantunes
I browsed my first website in 1994. It was weird and took forever to load.
Over time, I got a bunch of bookmarks and kept discovering new sites on a
weekly basis.

These days, I browse HN, proggit, Twitter, Reddit and Metafilter regularly. If
Twitter really does nerf their APIs, I'll have to stop visiting it because
principles, and it will take 20% of my current Web universe with it.

Not sure if my other hotspots will take its place, or if I'll finally start
turning away from the Web.

~~~
snthd
[https://joinmastodon.org](https://joinmastodon.org) ?

~~~
TekMol
I tried Mastodon recently and got the feeling it's only crazy people :)

Maybe I just don't find the right people. On Twitter, I can look up people I'm
interested in. Like "That company is doing something cool, let's follow the
CEO on Twitter". But on Mastodon?

Is there anybody 'normal' on there who posts substantial stuff?

~~~
horsemans
There are plenty of unique and interesting posters on Mastodon.
mastodon.technology is full of vintage computer experts, BBS operators, people
working to revitalize Gopher as an alternative to the ad-saturated web, and
more. And that’s just one instance. There are other instances where people
congregate to discuss art, music, books, and punk rock. There’s a Star Wars
themed instance, there’s safe places for sex workers and LGBTQ posters, and
all you have to do is care about one of these things to find a whole world of
enthusiasts. Searching [http://instances.social](http://instances.social)
gives you a huge list of registered instances.

But if you think people are divided up into “normal” and “not normal” (and
your definition of normal is “some CEO”) then yeah, maybe Mastodon isn’t right
for you.

~~~
TekMol

        full of vintage computer experts, BBS operators,
        people working to revitalize Gopher
    

That's what I meant with 'crazy people' :)

~~~
laumars
"crazy" is a little unfair there. Particularly with just how mainstream it has
become to collect and use retro hardware.

I think what you're trying to say is _" the aforementioned social network
doesn't have people who share the same interests as me"_ rather than it being
full of people who are mentally unwell.

------
keeptrying
Twitter has somehow managed to mis manage their developer ecosystem time and
time again. It’s incredibly sad.

By now they should have a massive developer ecosystem but these arbitrary
measures Lead to no developer wanting to build on Twitter.

------
epaga
FWIW, on Mac I can recommend Twitter's own "TweetDeck" which is really quite
great, multiple columns, multiple accounts, scheduled tweets, etc. Really hope
they don't shut that down in addition to the main Twitter client...

~~~
SyneRyder
The last update for TweetDeck Mac on the App Store was 14 July 2015 [1], and
they discontinued TweetDeck for iPhone & Android back in 2013 [2]. Twitter
seems to have little interest in native desktop apps.

(That said, the TweetDeck web app is not bad, and can be accessed by anyone at
tweetdeck.twitter.com.)

[1]
[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tweetdeck/id485812721?mt=12](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tweetdeck/id485812721?mt=12)

[2] [https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2013/an-update-
on-...](https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2013/an-update-on-
tweetdeck.html)

------
calvinbhai
The solution for my addiction to twitter is to ocassionally delete Tweetbot on
Mac and iOS, and use Twitter app or website.

Sad that apps like Tweetbot wont have the full features Gald that Twitter is
addressing my problems with wasting so much time on Tweetbot!

I'm not sure, but Twitter will be losing a huge user base that is very
influential and add a good chunk of value to the platform, that can afford to
pay, like even $10 - $20 a month for these 3rd party apps. Not sure why
Twitter cannot come up with a paid subscription model through third party apps
for power users.

------
TekMol
Is there any legal barrier to just parse the html of twitters normal pages?

If I write an app for myself, I'm pretty sure it's legal.

If I sell my app, I would think it's still legal. It's similar to an ad
blocker. It sits on the users computer and formats the page the user wants it
formatted.

Am I missing something?

~~~
djrogers
> Is there any legal barrier to just parse the html of twitters normal pages?

That wouldn't be a worthwhile effort, as it woulnd't give you any of the
features the API deprecation is taking away (notifications, streaming vs
polling, & a few others). You could just use the new API and live without
those things more easily than trying to maintain a web-scraping setup.

------
nielsbot
I've said this before, but Twitter should have an app store. Sure, have third
party apps, but have them be vetted and I suppose be required to display
Twitter's ads in an approved way. Everybody wins?

------
joeblau
I'm still surprised that no company has been able to de-throne Twitter.

~~~
haakon
The network effect is an amazing force and all too easy to underestimate.

------
haywirez
Can someone give a short summary of the changes and what will be axed? From a
quick look, follower counts should still be easy to retrieve from the free
tier, right?

~~~
elFarto
They're removing the streaming APIs, these allow a single long term connection
to receive tweets, follows, etc... in favor of a Webhook solution.

The issue is that there are not comparable solutions. The streaming API allows
a user to connection directly. With the webhook solution it has to all go via
3rd party server, and you need to pay for it.

------
userbinator
Whenever things like this come up, I think "What can I do with their 'official
API' that I can't get from just parsing the regular twitter.com/(URL goes
here) pages?"

~~~
JohnBooty
If you scrape it a few times per day, I'm sure they wouldn't notice.

You could certainly build a barebones scraper in a very minimal amount of
time, and that would probably work forever.

The amount of work required to go from "bare bones" to "actually pretty nice"
ala Tweetbot is not a trivial amount of work though.

~~~
OedipusRex
Not to mention Twitter would ban your IP if you did large amounts of scraping.

