Mar 14, 2011 9:46 AM

Twitter Clamps Down On Third-Party Clients

Ryan Sarver, Twitter’s platform product manager, has told app developers to give up on making basic third-party Twitter clients because the service needs to “move to a less fragmented world.” In a lengthy public statement, titled “consistency and ecosystem opportunities,” Sarver says, in no uncertain terms, “developers ask us if they should build client apps […]

Ryan Sarver, Twitter's platform product manager, has told app developers to give up on making basic third-party Twitter clients because the service needs to "move to a less fragmented world."

In a lengthy public statement, titled "consistency and ecosystem opportunities," Sarver says, in no uncertain terms, "developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no."

He accuses third-party Twitter clients of disobeying API rules -- "Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of API tokens and apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts," explains Sarver -- and confusing users with inconsistent standards, fracturing the Twitter landscape with different designs, terminologies and data sets.

'Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.'Third-party developers with established clients will be able to continue serving their users, but Twitter "will be holding [them] to high standards to ensure [they] do not violate users' privacy, that [they] provide consistency in the user experience, and that [they] rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service." New developers should refrain from building basic client applications altogether.

"I think it's unfortunate that Twitter made this decision when their early growth was largely due to third party applications," Jonnie Hallman told Wired.co.uk in an email. Hallman is the developer of DestroyTwitter, a sleek cross-platform client that prides itself on a featherweight CPU footprint.

Andrew Stone, the creator of the feature-laden Twittelator for iPhone and iPad, agrees, telling Wired.co.uk, "their entire enterprise would never have manifested to its current form had not the third party developers created such a compelling way to tweet."

The two client-makers cited a history of external innovation that's shaped and improved the Twitter service. Stone claims that Twitterlator introduced features like tweet translation, photo uploads and geotagging long before Twitter's official iPhone app. A spokesperson for the popular app Twitterific declined to comment on this story, but pointed us towards a list titled "Why are third parties important in the Twitter ecosystem?", which describes ways Twitterific preceded or perhaps influenced Twitter -- down to using a bird icon and even inventing the word "tweet".

"The fact that the official Twitter client for Mac was originally a third party app indicates just how valuable the development community is to such a service," argues DestroyTwitter's Hallman. The official Twitter app for Mac, iPhone and iPad was born out of Tweetie, a cheap, Apple Design Award winner from developer Loren Brichter.

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Sarver says that users are naturally gravitating towards the official apps, stating, "the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking. According to our data, 90 percent of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis." Stone argues, "90 percent of 190 million leaves me and the other developers 19 million customers. That's plenty to work with."

While many users do stick with officially licensed clients, Twitter's recent track-record has pushed some away. A recent change to its iPhone app introduced the "Quick Bar": an intrusive trending topic bar that floated over your feed -- so obnoxious that it was cutely renamed the "#dickbar" by disgruntled tweeters and heavily tweaked in a hastily released update. "I'll never introduce an unwanted trend bar," promises Hallman.

Although, it's not all rosy in the world of unofficial clients, either. Blackberry app UberSocial and Android mainstay Twidroyd both spent a weekend on the naughty step this February -- with their API blocked by Twitter -- for nasty privacy and trademark violations. TweetDeck's 140-character-busting "Deck.ly" feature has also polarised tweeters.

So what can programmers make with Twitter's API? Sarver points to services like social curation site Mass Relevance, influence analyzer Klout, enterprise client HootSuite and check-in favorite Foursquare as examples of third-party creations that work with, and not against, Twitter. But as for clients, Sarver firmly details Twitter's desires of monopolization, saying that the company will "provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices."

As a industry veteran with more than 23 years of experience at firms like Apple, Stone recognises the need for third-party developers to follow the rules. "I wrote [to Sarver] yesterday afternoon to explain we will happily work with Twitter to follow their new ToS," he explains. "I just worry about mission creep over at Twitter HQ as they become a more established business."

Hallman says, "if Twitter is so concerned with maintaining consistency across the board, I hope they realise how much the community has contributed to their standards. Users coined the term 'tweet', not Twitter. And users invented the ' retweet', not Twitter."