Twitter API: App developers up in arms

Twitter had on Friday announced stricter rules that will, in effect, hurt the third-party apps. Now, the miffed developers of popular third party apps such as Tweetbot, Tweetcaster, Seesmic and Twitterrific, which have a large user base, will have to coordinate directly with the company, among many other changes. Though Twitter said these changes will help provide a "consistent experience," the move has met with huge criticism, with many leading firms showering scathing remarks over the microblogging website.

Certainly, the biggest bone of contention seems to be the cap that Twitter has placed on user base of the third party apps. Now, apps will not be able to increase its client base by 200% of its current users or 100,000. This severely limits the potential of any app. Clearly, last has not been heard on the issue.

Marco Arment, the creater of Instapaper, noted that the new rules declared by Twitter seek that developers should add value to the site, but not extract the same from it. Commenting about Twitter's move of asking developers with a large user base to work closely, he stated Twitter basically means, "Once you get big enough for us to notice, we're going to require you to adhere to more strict, unpublished rules to make sure you don't compete with us, or take too much value from our network."

Arment noted that Twitter, which reportedly had over 1 million registered third party apps on its platform, does not need many of the non-trivial apps, which directly compete with it. Rather, it would be glad if they are shut down. He continued, saying that he has already given up on a Twitter-based business model.

Box CEO Aaron Levie said, "Twitter's API has more rules than North Korea," pointing towards the difficulties that developers will face in the time to come. CEO of Bottlenose.com, Nova Spivack appealed to people to sign up for #OccupyTwitter, a digital counterpart of 'Occupy Wall Street' movement.

Another issue is the company's clampdown on integrating its services with other platforms. This will affect developers who source tweets to their apps, such as Flipboard or Zite. This move has also come under heavy criticism, as users may not be able to see their twitter updates whereas Facebook, LinkedIn etc will continue on the same platform.

Twitter has asked developers using its API to authenticate their apps and migrate to the new API within six months. The company's 'Developer Rules of the Road' will also become more stringent for new apps. Developers were also asked to make use of Twitter Cards rather than sourcing Twitter content.

Of course, supporters of Twitter say that the company needs to monetise itself and making stricter rules is a part of the process. The microblogging website will, reportedly, generate revenues of $260 million this year, which is petty change compared to Facebook's $3.7 billion revenue.

However, detractors are not buying this argument, with Spivack stating, "The future market cap of the company will ultimately be orders of magnitude greater if they are stewards of the open nervous system of the planet than if they are the next Myspace trying to sell ads on their own pages and apps."

An alternate has already come up. A start-up called App.net has said it will be "what Twitter should have been." It will generate revenue from users and developers, charging them $50 and $100 for access, respectively, and will not have advertisements. It has already received an investment of $600,000 for further development.

Source: http://timesofindia.feedsportal.com/fy/8at2Etf0dAaIt2y4/story01.htm

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