Scripting News: “1. If you make a Twitter client, you have a bit of time to get out of that business. If you were thinking about writing one, don’t.”
I haven’t read the entire “consistency and ecosystem” post but there’s a lot of language in there around do’s and don’ts. A lot of it is to help make the service as good as it can possibly be, you don’t want, or need, a bunch of spammers abusing the API’s, right? Me neither, but what about Twitter advertising, or things like the #dickbar that had users of the Twitter iPhone client up in arms? What if your client WAS REQUIRED to show the #dickbar? How would you feel about that? Probably not so good.
Is it time for that distributed “Twitter-like” service without the single authority? Maybe.
If you’re a Twitter Client developer you’d better read the new Twitter API Terms of Service, now.
It’s a pretty bold (or bald, perhaps) move from Twitter. And it’s an unfortunate one because the “official” Twitter clients that I have access to (on the Web, on Windows, and on Windows Phone) are inferior to the alternatives that I use. If I’m forced to only use official Twitter clients, I’ll stop using Twitter.
See http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/03/11/twitter-tells-developers-to-stop-developing-new-twitter-clients/ for some more about it.
Tommy,
It seems so counter to the GREAT organic ecosystem that evolved. If they’d done this from day one, ok, but to do it four years in?
Hopefully they leave the current crop of clients alone. I’ve been a loyal Twitterrific user for quite a while now and I really don’t want to switch. The official Twitter client on iOS used to be great, now it’s a bit messy. I do two things with my client; read my timeline and write. That’s it.