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The question I have with this move is why didn't Twitter just force advertising as part of their API for third party clients? Just change the TOS for using the API so if they didn't show advertising they would be cut off. What am I missing?
Apparently most creators use a third party client at least, so this seems sure to do some damage to the Twitter experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Starting Feb 1st using a third part client will require Twitter Blue.” That’s all it would have taken. Probably would have made a huge increase in subscribers too. This is 100% a control move. He wants full control over how everyone experiences Twitter (not sure why). So this was pulled. Of course you can NEVER go back from this move.
I can't say I totally saw this coming, but when Elon started talking about the WeChat/Everything App/X, the writing was on the all for 3rd party clients. Still, a very shortsighted move.
The question I have with this move is why didn't Twitter just force advertising as part of their API for third party clients? Just change the TOS for using the API so if they didn't show advertising they would be cut off. What am I missing?
Plus didn't the apps have to pay for api access? I know there was some contention around that when the push notification api changed.
There was a big fuss over third-party clients being limited to 100k users. Twitter fairly quickly walked back that limit (with additional verification and rules specific to clients reaching that size being required).
The number of users on third-party clients could not have been significant enough to justify this. At very least, the developers could have been given some notice or an ounce of respect about API access being phased out.
Not to mention third-party client users are mostly power users who are responsible for a lot of the content on Twitter that the rest consume.
On the bright side, Mastodon has been gaining traction and can't be dismissed anymore. I'm actually using it more than Twitter now. Fantastic clients are coming out like Tapbot's own Ivory and IceCubes, and it's exciting to see what developers can and will do without the confines of Twitter. I'm optimistic this will turn out to be a very good thing for everyone but Twitter and Elon.
I have been on board with or ambivalent about most of the changes. I don't care if there's less moderation, I think Twitter probably did have too many employees, and I like the idea of a paid account with fewer (preferably no) ads. I'd even have happily paid Twitter to continue using Tweetbot.
But this has destroyed the trust and the user experience of many of the power users who are most engaged with Twitter and who make it a thing other people want to engage with.
I have sent 10,000s of Tweets but I can't see it being much more than a handful more.
I don't think Mastodon is a good replacement for Twitter at all, but I am going to have to try it. The fact that Tapbots are enthusiastically supporting it with Ivory is a good sign (though @tapbots, if you're listening, I'd happily donate 10x more to Ivory as an open source project than you'd make from selling it to me as a closed source app ;-).
Shutting down third party clients? It's arguably a valid decision. They presumably want to consolidate the users into directly controlled clients, where they can be advertised to and can have premium subscription features prominently featured. The former could have been rolled into the API, but the latter would have been basically impossible.
But doing it like this is just giving everyone who was a hardcore twitter user (if you use a third party client, particularly one you're paying a subscription for...) a nudge into jumping ship. The alternative approach of announcing the "no more third party clients" API terms change and giving everyone time to wind their apps down would also have generated complaints, but I bet it'd have gotten them better press and user outcomes than this. Hell, just announce "you must have a Twitter Blue subscription to use a third party client" and that might have actually gone well for them.
I have an old friend who is blind. The official Twitter client is a LOT less accessible than the one she was using. This change impacts her ability to use Twitter considerably. And before you start with the "well, she's probably better off" -- she lives in a small rural town. Twitter and Facebook and the like are one of her few connections to a larger world.
If your friend truly does have issues navigating the site perhaps she may want to look to a legal remedy -- from all appearances that is really the only knob that seems to have any impact on Musk.
I just don't see the replacement for Twitter as Mastodon -- which it seems the Tweetbot people are targeting. Twitter will likely file for bankruptcy later this year due to the debt burden. However, the replacement for Twitter won't be a Twitter "clone." Things will move on. I'm not smart enough to know what people will move on to... But they will move on.