Twitter Inc. has overhauled its Application Programming Interface (API). The new policy that aims to "deliver a consistent Twitter experience" will affect popular third-party apps for the micro-blogging service.
According to the director of consumer product, Michael Sippey, the changes in version 1.1 will give the Web site more control over publish and re-publish of tweets and limit the third-party Twitter apps imitating Twitter's functionality.
The new version 1.1 will incorporate new authentication requirements and limit the number of users to 100,000. For more tweets, user will be required to have Twitter's specific authorization.
In a post, Sippey wrote, "Currently, in v1.0 of the Twitter API we allow developers access to certain API endpoints without requiring their applications to authenticate, essentially enabling them to access public information from the Twitter API without us knowing who they are. For example, there are many applications that are pulling data from the Twitter API at very high rates (scraping, bots, etc.) where we only know the IP address of the applications."
He added that "For developers who are already using OAuth when making API requests, all of your authentication tokens will transition seamlessly from v1.0 to v1.1. If your application is currently using the Twitter API without using OAuth, you will need to update your application before March 2013."
Sippey, however, mentions that Twitter will not be "shutting down client applications that use those endpoints and are currently over those token limits." If a user's application exceeds 100,000 individual user tokens he/she will "be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you reach 200% of your current user token count". The catch is users need to comply with Twitter's "Rules of the Road."
Moreover, once a user reaches 200 percent of their "current user token" count he/she will be "able to maintain your application to serve your users, but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission."
Meanwhile, developers and Twitter users are reportedly angry over the recent changes that the micro-blogging site has made.
Marco Arment, developer of Instapaper, responded saying "Twitter has left themselves a lot of wiggle-room with the rules. Effectively, Twitter can decide your app is breaking a (potentially vague) rule at any time, or they can add a new rule that your app inadvertently breaks, and revoke your API access at any time."
"Of course, they've always had this power. But now we know that they'll use it in ways that we really don't agree with," said Arment.
