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A new and improved Twitter API

blog.twitter.com

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Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#21

Post by picodguyo »

This is what they cite as the key benefits:

"A cleaner API that's easier to use, with new developer features like the ability to specify which fields get returned, or retrieve more Tweets from a conversation within the same response

Some of the most requested features that were missing from the API, including conversation threading, poll results in Tweets, pinned Tweets on profiles, spam filtering, and a more powerful stream filtering and search query language "

I really doubt this is what developers have been yearning for in a revamped Twitter API. Previous APIs provided plenty of functionality, it's just that too many of us were burned by the ever-shifting policies around API use. I personally went from envisioning Twitter as the social data pipeline of the web to vowing never to touch it again within the span of one year. I can't believe this announcement wouldn't touch on policy and developer relations at all.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#22

Post by tehwebguy »

pjc50 wrote: post #15
sim_card_map wrote: post #6

No word on the most important thing: the limits. Current limits that keep becoming stricter and stricter make the API unusable.

I was looking into doing something for my own use, and you can't even retrieve your own list of followers or blocked users in one go! You have to paginate it, each page is counted against the rate limit!

Everything non-streaming from Twitter has always been paginated, no? Same with all YouTube, probably FB too right?

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#23

Post by DickScarington »

The final straw for me was when twitter deprecated the years-old auth keys I had used without any issues because I wouldn't register my phone number.

If you look at twitter's checkered history, I don't see why anyone would put the effort into a new API without strict guarantees of future usability.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#26

Post by bad_user »

picodguyo wrote: post #21

This is what they cite as the key benefits: "A cleaner API that's easier to use, with new developer features like the ability to specify which fields get returned, or retrieve more Tweets from a conversation within the same response Some of the most requested features that were missing from the API, including conversation threading, poll results in Tweets, pinned Tweets on profiles, spam filtering, and a more powerfu…

Speak for yourself. Their current API makes third party clients very difficult because they lack features and I hoped they'll announce something like this.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind them touching on the developers relations they want to build, but no company of their size will admit to wrongdoing in the past.

Also words aren't worth anything unless they come in a legally binding contract that can't change on a whim.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#27

Post by johnnyfaehell »

phone8675309 wrote: post #16
vdfs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limit is your wallet

No joke. I maintain a bot that interfaces with the Twitter API to take in tweets and post tweets from specific users in chat channels. I read this blog post to determine a) what I need to do to port to the new API and b) how much this privilege of using Twitter will cost me, and it is mum on both of those aspects. Absolutely brilliant, Twitter.

I guess it's a case of "If you've got to ask, you can't afford it"

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#28

Post by duiker101 »

tehwebguy wrote: post #22
pjc50 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking into doing something for my own use, and you can't even retrieve your own list of followers or blocked users in one go! You have to paginate it, each page is counted against the rate limit!

Everything non-streaming from Twitter has always been paginated, no? Same with all YouTube, probably FB too right?

Same with everything ever, some users have hundreds of thousands of followers, I'm not sure how you would do it without pagination.

The limits are tight. It's true. But pagination is not the enemy.

I think better scaling of the pricing tiers could help but Twitter probably doesn't care enough about small devs.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#29

Post by stefan_ »

caiobegotti wrote: post #14

These folks from Twitter might suffer from a major disconnection from reality, they burned several bridges of trust over the years and now they just write a small disclaimer about them discovering the hack from this week and the new API apparently does not address issues people had with it in the past (that were used to choke 3rd-party apps). Kudos to the developers working on it directly though, I suppose it takes a…

This disclaimer is hilarious, it's like some terrible catastrophe happened far far away from them. But in fact it's been days of deafening silence out of Twitter, and they are fricking ground zero!

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#30

Post by fooyc »

They are pushing stuff on the public API that has been available for years to “managed accounts” via Gnip.com.

This makes the paid APIs more widely available - it’s now possible to start using paid APIs without talking to a sales person, with lower budget (but not lower prices - some endpoints cost nearly $1 per call).

They also plan to remove free endpoints 6 months to 1 year after a paid equivalent is released.

Bye bye per-user quota.

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