Crossed Wires23 Jan 2023

Ollie, Space Karen, and an API

The last week or so has seen some extraordinary rubbish behaviour from Twitter regarding their API for third-party clients, like Twitterrific and Tweetbots. Users found themselves unable to access their timelines via anything but the official app and website, and developers had no communication to tell them what on earth was going on.

On Thursday, Twitter announced that this was intentional and that many third-party apps would no longer have API access. This caused no end of frustration for developers like Iconfactory. So it’s my pleasure to be joined by Gedeon, their principal and designer, to try to unpack what exactly happened, and the impact this has had and will continue to have on their business.

What are your memories of the good old days of Twitter, did you have a favourite third-party app you used? We’d love to hear from you, so please send a note over to podcast@crossedwires.net, leave a comment on the post, or join the discussion over on our Discord server. Of course, you can also follow us on Mastodon

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

Gedeon Maheux on Mastodon
Iconfactory: Website / Apps / Blog
Twitter bans third-party apps (TechCrunch)
Ivory by Tapbots
Our chat with James Smith on Mastodon and the Fediverse

Chapter Times

00:00:04: Introductions
00:06:27: The Original Twitter App Experience
00:08:55: The Last Big API Changes
00:11:32: What Happened to the API?
00:16:54: The Importance of 3rd Party Apps
00:20:27: Moving to Mastodon?
00:25:03: The Financial Impact
00:35:19: Why Do We Think This Happened?
00:49:34: The Core Twitter Experience Rule?
00:53:12: APIs on Other Platforms?
00:58:53: The Future is Mastodon
01:03:35: A Done Deal
01:08:07: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

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