Codebreaker

Twitter further restricts API

John Moe Aug 17, 2012

While Twitter is plenty popular among various Kardashia (that’s the plural of Kardashian), it’s making web developers grumpier and grumpier. The company has probably angered those developers yet more by placing new, tougher restrictions on its application programming interface (API), which is the information that lets people build new products using the guts of Twitter. The Twitter developers blog says the changes, which go into effect next year, will include things like per-hour limits to the API and tighter authentication requirements.

But here’s the part making everyone mad:

If your application already has more than 100,000 individual user tokens, you’ll be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you reach 200% of your current user token count (as of today) – as long as you comply with our Rules of the Road. Once you reach 200% of your current user token count, you’ll be able to maintain your application to serve your users, but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission.

So if your app gets twice as big as it was to start, you aren’t allowed to grow it any further.

Twitter’s coming to a crossroads here. Its popularity as a platform is extraordinary and that might be at odds with the growth or even interests of the company that is trying to hard control 

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