It was recently revealed that Twitter has over 500 million users. Now the fat birds of microblogging are planning to virtually pull the plug on many apps and services that have been built around their API with a post about the news yesterday. The closing in of their walled garden is another example of a popular service that is starting to get sick of others making money off of them.
Marco Arment gives a great layman’s interpretation of what’s happening here.
Phrases such as “choke access“, “pushed developers aside“, and “talk to the hand” have been used to describe this behavior, currently being bashed by bloggers and Twitter users alike. It should act as a stark warning: don’t build anything for profit on someone else’s platform. It’s okay to utilize their services as components, but the companies who are relying on Twitter API calls to operate are going to be devastated by the changes.
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