Twitter has released its controversial API update which restricts third party developers, opening up the possibility of in-app ads in the process.
The move has sparked anger form some developers, who have claimed the move could stifle the development of innovative products.
The firm’s hugely popular API platform has spawned a number of widely used social media applications such as TweetDeck, Hootsuite and Twitpic.
After announcing the plans last month, Twitter formally released its API 1.1 to developers this week.
The API gives Twitter greater control over independent developers, and drops support for RSS, XML and Atom feeds on the micro-blogging service.
The move aims to give Twitter users a smoother experience whether the user is on Twitter.com, on the official Twitter apps, or one any of the many third-party Twitter clients.
To that end, the API terms hint that Twitter may include ads in the future.
In its blog post, the company said: “Twitter reserves the right to serve advertising via its APIs (“Twitter Ads”). If you decide to serve Twitter Ads once we start delivering them, we will share a portion of advertising revenue with you per our then-current terms and conditions.”
At the moment, Twitter’s ads, called ‘Promoted Tweets’ appear in the company’s official clients, as well as in certain third-party clients like Hootsuite.
Along with the new API, Twitter has also updated the API Terms (what Twitter calls its “Rules of the Road”) and display requirements.
Limits to number of app users
Following the change in API rules, any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company’s explicit permission.
Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to expand by 200% before having to get Twitter’s go-ahead to grow further.
This doesn’t apply to the entire Twitter ecosystem, just the apps that replicate the core Twitter experience and don’t direct traffic back to the site – the very apps that Twitter is trying to stamp out.
In his blog post, Twitter’s Jason Costa clarified that the limit that will only apply to certain apps, explaining: “The 100,000 user token limit applies only to the small set of clients replicating the core Twitter experience. It does not apply to the majority of other applications in the broader ecosystem.”
LinkedIn, Instagram and Tumblr have already seen the effect of Twitter’s new restrictions, but perhaps the worst hit (so far) has been Tweetbot.
The popular third-party Twitter client is currently developing a desktop application for Mac but had to shut down access to its alpha and beta testing due to Twitter’s decision to cap user access.
Tweetbot for Mac’s alpha/beta testing has been restarted, but no new users can be added as the developers want to save their limited number of user tokens for when they launch the complete, paid-for version, which they have assured is going ahead.
RSS support dropped
A bigger surprise is the decision to drop support for RSS, XML and Atom. Twitter had already dropped XML support from its streaming and trends APIs, so that was on the cards, but one would think that RSS and Atom – being two commonly used formats for web feeds – would continue untouched.
But Twitter had other ideas and has decided to focus on JSON support only, claiming that XML, Atom and RSS were only seeing infrequent use.
Alongside this announcement, though, comes the introduction of a new tool from Twitter to embed interactive feeds on any website.
Feeds can come from a single user or list of users, or follow a chosen hashtag. The embedded feed will provide the same functionality as the feed on the main Twitter site, allowing users to follow others, expand tweets to see photos or video content, and send, reply, retweet and favourite tweets.
This new tool is more necessary now than ever as many services pulling feeds from Twitter for display elsewhere would have relied on RSS.
Developers must fall into line with the new API rules by 5 March 2013 or risk being cut off from the Twitter API.
Read the official blog post from Twitter here
