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Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” version of Twitter abruptly and unexpectedly cut off API access for a popular third-party Twitter client in January, causing an unnamed I quoted the “long-standing API rule”. The company later reviewed its developer agreement to prohibit “alternative or similar services or products for the Twitter application.”
For the two former developers of Tweetbot and Twitterific (two of the longest-lived and most popular third-party Twitter clients), this meant losing their biggest product and revenue stream, suddenly leaving the apps they were paying for. There was the possibility of refunding subscribers who were no longer available. .
Tapbots and The Iconfactory (developers of Tweetbot and Twitterrific, respectively) have released the final update to their Twitter app to walk users through the process of dealing with expired subscriptions. If the user wants a prorated refund (he goes back to January 12th, the last day both clients were functioning normally), then nothing needs to be done. Both apps offer prorated refunds to subscribers who don’t listen. However, the app also includes a button that allows users to opt out of refunds, allowing developers to keep that money to fund future projects.
“The continued loss of recurring revenue from Twitterrific has already hit our business hard, and refunds will come directly out of our pocket, not Twitter or Apple,” said Sean of Twitterific. Heber wrote in a blog post shortly after the API access outage. Discontinued. “Simply put, thousands of refunds would be devastating for a small company like ours.”
Users who forget to request a refund for Tweetbot or Twitterrific can contact Apple to request a refund if they change their minds later. If you are a Tweetbot or Twitterific subscriber and have already deleted the app, you can redownload the app to transfer your subscription or waive your refund.
Tapbots has already moved to a new project called Ivory. This is an iOS and iPadOS client for the decentralized Mastodon social network that looks and functions very similar to the previous Tweetbot (macOS client still in development). A Tweetbot user can choose to transfer the rest of his Tweetbot subscription to Ivory instead of receiving a refund or abandoning it. Iconfactory has expressed interest in supporting Mastodon and its underlying ActivityPub protocol, but as of late January had no specific products in development.
Twitter API access is one of the many topics that the unstable version of Twitter in the Mask era struggled to address. Musk initially announced that anyone who wants to use the API, including researchers and automated bot accounts, would have to pay a fee.he later Said It says that a “lightweight, write-only API” will be available “for bots that provide great content for free.” This post is dated his February 4th, and since then there have been no official announcements regarding API access.
Tapbots co-founder Paul Haddad wrote in Mastodon: “My guess is that they didn’t have someone who could properly implement paid rate limiting in the 1.1 API, so he gave up on everything.”
