Twitter won’t charge for API access for ‘critical purposes’ after all

Twitter has reversed course on its decision to shut off free access to its API, following widespread criticism from government and public service organisations.

The company has made numerous controversial decisions under Elon Musk’s leadership, but reducing users’ access to critical information was seen as dangerous and self-harming to the platform’s usefulness.

However, Twitter says it will now allow verified government and publicly-owned services to use the API...

3 May 2023 | API

Twitter pushes API changes back further as concerns mount

Twitter will now introduce its API changes over a week later than planned while concerns over the impact continue to grow.

Elon Musk’s social network first announced on 2 February 2023 that it was ending free access to its API (both v2 and v1.1) a week later on February 9th.

Twitter later pushed back the API changes to February 13th. Now, the company says it will take a bit longer again:

https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1625234161010343941

Despite...

14 February 2023 | API

Twitter announces charges for third-party developers

Less than a month after unceremoniously blocking third-party apps, Twitter has announced new charges for developers using its API.

In a tweet, Twitter announced that it will end free access to its API (both v2 and v1.1) on 9 February 2023.

The company says a paid basic tier will be available to replace the free access. More specific details are due to be announced next week.

https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1621026986784337922

It’s not the best time...

2 February 2023 | API

Twitter’s relationship with developers has fallen apart

The already strained relationship between Twitter and developers has now completely fallen apart.

Over the years, Twitter has made a series of decisions that damaged its relationship with developers.

In 2012, Twitter limited the number of active tokens an app can have—essentially putting a cap on how successful a third-party app can become. A number of apps kicked the bucket after that decision.

Increasingly strict rate limits on things such as retweets and...

16 January 2023 | API

Twitter launches new API, wants developers to build the good kind of bots

Twitter has released a new API which it wants developers to use to build helpful bots and more powerful third-party apps.

According to a post on the Twitter Developer Blog, the new API will no longer take “a one-size-fits-all approach” and will be “more flexible and scalable to fit your needs.”

What that means in practice is Twitter’s API now includes three access levels: the free basic level, elevated, and custom. Developers will no longer have to transfer...

13 August 2020 | API