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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

tapbots.com

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#181

Post by joezydeco »

mttjj wrote: post #13

Tweetbot was the only way I interacted with Twitter for years. I refuse to use the website and I refuse to download Twitter's app. When it was finally revealed that this move was intentional I deleted my Twitter account. I was mocked in high school for having a Twitter account (2008) and not a Facebook account. I remember "tweeting" from my flip/dumb-phone. I still don't have Facebook. I don't regret being on Twitter…

100% concur, but don't delete your account. Don't let someone else take the username. Delete your tweets and wipe your profile, but let it sit dormant. Forever.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#182

Post by gdulli »

seydor wrote: post #111
chc4 wrote: post #90

I've been on twitter since 2009 and have 100k+ tweet. Since they've killed all third-party clients I've basically stopped using twitter, and have no intention of using the (bad) official client. Good job Elon!

to all the people who claim this, i wish there was a RemindMe! feature to check back in a few months People who have invested years of their lives writing thousands of tweets aren't giving up investments so easily. This is like real life investments or relationships, it takes a lot to break them

The difference here is that Twitter had been going downhill for a while before the recent changes. In 2022 people were already using it grudgingly, out of inertia. Not addiction or excitement.

Even before Musk, I consciously anticipated that a disruption to my chosen chronological feed client would mean the end of my time on Twitter. I prepared for it. I've started to wean and haven't missed it as much as I assumed I would. It's a relief as much of an imposition. I've tried out other ways of browsing content.

There's no one service that will end up being exactly what Twitter was, but neither had Twitter been for a while. The various degradations of the experience over the last few months only had to be bad enough to get us to realize what we already sensed, that Twitter is in its Facebook era. It will still be running in 5 years because it's too big to die quickly. But it's on the downward slope of its cultural relevance. A year from now it will be the equivalent of that-site-your-grandparents-use.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#183

Post by erulabs »

I mean, I understand the engineer part of me that says hey, it's a widely used public API, don't shut it down all at once you dick.

But there is another part of me that wonders if all these folks who say "I have 100k tweets and I'll only use the unofficial clients" aren't betraying more than they think: All the twitterati pro-users who schedule tweets daily... Are they good for the platform? I'd lean towards a soft "maybe?" but that's only intuition and nothing else. It's entirely possible that destroying as much of the automation abilities of more powerful clients is -exactly- what would benefit twitter the most.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#184

Post by tptacek »

eddieroger wrote: post #122
tptacek wrote: post #87

If you're not paying attention to Mastodon now, a think to know about Tapbots and Ivory, their new ActivityPub client, is that their TestFlight betas, which they release in batches of a thousand or so at a time, last for just a couple minutes before they're all snapped up; there seems to be pretty huge demand for it. With a decent client (I've bounced around a couple of them so far), even in a beta state, the experie…

There are also lots of other interesting clients not from Tapbots. If losing Tweetbot was enough to make you look at Mastodon, keep that open mind and look at all the interesting clients out there.

I'm test-driving Mammoth right now, and spent a couple weeks in MetaText (which is I think not maintained anymore, but it worked fine).

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#185

Post by ihuman »

CharlesW wrote: post #123
ceejayoz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're unaffected; the ban is specific to replicating the Twitter.com / first-party app experience. Exact wording: "a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications".

> They're unaffected… This seems plausible, but has there been any official confirmation? If I'm Elon, my next act of ecosystem warfare is to monetize remaining API use cases to within an inch of their life.

Buffer and Hootsuite have both said that they are unaffected

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#187

Post by seydor »

gdulli wrote: post #182
seydor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to all the people who claim this, i wish there was a RemindMe! feature to check back in a few months People who have invested years of their lives writing thousands of tweets aren't giving up investments so easily. This is like real life investments or relationships, it takes a lot to break them

The difference here is that Twitter had been going downhill for a while before the recent changes. In 2022 people were already using it grudgingly, out of inertia. Not addiction or excitement. Even before Musk, I consciously anticipated that a disruption to my chosen chronological feed client would mean the end of my time on Twitter. I prepared for it. I've started to wean and haven't missed it as much as I assumed I…

chronological feed exists in twitter's website before and after musk - it's how i use it

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#188

Post by asenchi »

Tweetbot was the client that made Twitter fun to use. Now I'm lost and can't stand using the service. Trying to figure out how to maintain my contacts on the platform while navigating the site has been awful. What a terrible experience it is. I'll probably try the Twitter app but I am hopeful I can keep up with everyone on a different platform someday.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#190

Post by geekifier »

This is a terrible decision just from the optics perspective - alienating those who are more likely to be power users.

But how many people do they seriously expect to install the official Twitter app instead? I, for one, will not; as the privacy page on the App Store basically makes me "steer clear".

Whatever percentage of 3rd party clients they get to switch over seems like a rather dubious trade-off to all of the bad press, and the terrible manner in which this was executed.

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