A new and improved Twitter API • Hacker News Board

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#31

Post by Macha » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #26

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 o…

Given the examples of promoted API usage, it doesn't seem to have any backing away from their stance that they don't want third party clients. Add to that their API pricing was as I understand it not feasible for any new client app used by end users which gets any serious amount of usage and needs to move to paid tiers.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#32

Post by sdevonoes » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:05 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #24

Nobody wants a new API. The new features don’t make up for all the work needed to rewrite every call. Again. Nobody wants this.

Agree. This seems like a poor attempt to marketing themselves "better".

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#33

Post by benlumen » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

I'd love access to the Twitter API for research purposes for my writing, but I'm priced out for that purpose.

I can't prove it, but it feels like they only want big businesses researching their markets, and not people like me asking questions about Twitter itself - even though letting people do that would result in negligible additional traffic.

This might be controversial and I know people will say that they're a private company and can do what they want, but Twitter has positioned itself as society's de-facto official communication channel and I think the data on it should be a matter of public record at this point.

edit: Does anyone have experience with scraping tools and Twitter? Presumably it's hard to do.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#34

Post by aranw » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:16 PM UTC

I'd care more if I could actually appeal my dev account being perma banned for real reason other than I failed to clearly express what I wanted to do with a app

> You cannot create additional apps because your developer account was rejected or suspended.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#35

Post by thinkingemote » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

One amazing use of the twitter API is to be able to mass delete your favs, rts, and tweets. It's the only thing I use it for as the API and platform as a whole is otherwise hostile.

https://github.com/MikeMcQuaid/TwitterDelete

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#36

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

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…

Just out of curiosity: What type of application would have you interace with twitter at all? For ad purposes, some form of analysis? News aggregation?

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#37

Post by dewey » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #36

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…

Just out of curiosity: What type of application would have you interace with twitter at all? For ad purposes, some form of analysis? News aggregation?

Any Twitter client?

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#38

Post by drej » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

Keeping my fingers crossed for removal of OAuth and other complications accessing the API. I hate using libraries for this, all I want is a simple token-based REST API, something like Facebook and many others have had for years.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#39

Post by ilikehurdles » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #36

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…

Just out of curiosity: What type of application would have you interace with twitter at all? For ad purposes, some form of analysis? News aggregation?

Product support ticket systems use twitter and other social media sites to respond to customer feedback, as well as track and escalate issues. When you tweet complaints about your service at Comcast, there's probably a ticket created that someone from their support staff picks up. I think there's a perception that the quicker responses that these tools facilitate can help prevent negative feedback from going viral and doing broader harm to the company.

Re: A new and improved Twitter API

#40

Post by Nav_Panel » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

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…

> conversation threading

Actually, this was a major point of API failure when I last tried to use it. Did you know that, with the current API, there's no way to retrieve the replies to a tweet? This makes it impossible to build tools that, say, allow you to visualize a tweet thread, because you simply can't fetch the thread.

So I'll say that, as a casual, social, and informational user of Twitter (i.e. not business, not adtech, not academia), this announcement gives me a little hope that we might see a resurgence in 3rd party apps that provide more powerful ways of interfacing with Twitter. At least, that's my hope, maybe I'm naive that they'd really allow this.