Unsurprisingly, the outage hasn't affected twitters own client. Roll on May 2023. Unless twitter want to block the EU, they will have to provide the same level of access to 3rd party clients as they do their own. If the API is down for 3rd parties, but not for twitters own client, that will be considered a breach.
Did you look at the Digital Market's Act? It's not at all going to be allowing 3rd party clients for services lol.
This is more than a stretch of interpretation, it's wishful thinking.
I wrote a paper on you and a couple of other third-party Twitter clients in undergrad on the importance of modern day brand preservation and protection for an integrated marketing class while this was playing out. In a roundabout way, you kind of helped me get an A in that class! :D
Lol, speaking of brand protection, there's even a reason why the app had to be renamed to ...droyd from ...droid.
Naming your app as a portmanteau of two trademarked brand names is certainly brave!
Oh, it seems it was reset to use the algorithmic one. I for sure did not change that myself... Thx for making me double check
Ah! Yes, since they rolled out the For You/Timeline things, the apps tend sometimes to revert to For you randomly for no reason... One of my alts gets switched everytime, while my main account does not. All using them from the same iOS app.
It happens whenever the app reloads. If you swipe up (on iOS) to quit the app and then re-open it, you'll see it start off on For You.
I was the creator of Twidroyd (First and biggest Android Twitter app w/ ~70% marketshare) and there was a larger story behind the first big anti-3rd party move. Basically we had some plans to bring users over to a new network after we got acquired by Idealab — and Twitter got wind of it. Think Mastodon 2010 style.
Has there been any interest in telling this story in any rich medium (podcast, long form article, 30 minute youtube video, documentary, netflix series). Not only does that sound super interesting, but now that most/all of Twitter Execs have moved on - I wonder if you'd be able to get Twitter's side of the story as well.
Twitter was a different shop back then — You could literally jump on a call with Ev et al (and even humans at Google when it came to Android) but while significant decisions were made at the time, it's nothing more than a melancholic blip in tech history.
Strangely enough, I'm working on a new product in this space but it won't touch Twitter's API for sure :)
I only ever use Twitter via Tweetbot, which has never tried to show me something other than a chronological feed of posts from people I follow. I have absolutely no interest in a curated timeline, so I guess I'm done with Twitter if the API doesn't start working again.
The Twitter app just got an update that makes it easier to switch to the chronological timeline, and it appears to actually stick now. (At least it has so far).
Doesn't avoid the ads though, which are still ubiquitous.
It would not surprise me if this is the end of third party clients and the new owner has removed access. Very disappointing if he has, particularly if he's done it with zero notice too. He has been making significant noise of feature changes in the official client coming in the next couple of weeks. Removing the third party client access would align with that, along with removing the little "posted by ..." note on ea…
Why are people jumping to a ridiculous conclusion about the API being removed, especially because it's literally in the middle of the night in California? Like why assume the much more reasonable opinion that it's simply an outage.
(Did you ever work in Houston, and does your first name start with M?)
This might be the last straw. I flat out refuse to use their horrible app with its nonsense algorithmic timeline. Give it a few hours to see if it's permanent but if it is, I expect a huge wave of new mastodon users..
which other social app allows using chronological-mode?
Tumblr is still chronological i believe, with ads injected in to the timeline of course.
I was the creator of Twidroyd (First and biggest Android Twitter app w/ ~70% marketshare) and there was a larger story behind the first big anti-3rd party move. Basically we had some plans to bring users over to a new network after we got acquired by Idealab — and Twitter got wind of it. Think Mastodon 2010 style.
Twidroyd was one of my frequently used clients back when I had a Nexus phone, along with Seesmic client.
Nexus was already a Mercedes phone. We started when there wasn't even a physical device on the market.
It’s running well because the old guard built it so well. Musk threw them all out, so it will slowly but surely degrade. There was a reason Twitter had such a large workforce.
> It’s running well because the old guard built it so well. Twitter is a shitshow technically. Sub-tweets don't nest right and change order in a arbitrary way.
The backend that handles the API has generally been relatively solid, but the official clients are a complete disaster.