Third-party Twitter apps have seen their business go up in smoke
The developer of third-party Twitter app Twitterrific is pleading with customers not to ask for a refund after the company was forced to pull its app.
A sudden change to Twitter’s policy means that third-party Twitter clients are now banned. Consequently, Twitterrific and other popular apps – such as Tweetbot, Echofon and Talon – have effectively been rendered useless overnight.
“We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer,” reads a post on Twitterrific developer Iconfactory’s blog.
Cancelled subscriptions
The Twitterrific app has been pulled from the iOS and Mac app stores, and ongoing subscriptions will be automatically cancelled. However, the developer is asking customers not to request a full refund on outstanding subscriptions from Apple, through fear of tipping the business over the edge.
“Finally, if you were subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple,” the blog post reads.
“The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets – not Twitter’s and not Apple’s. To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours.”
Twitter ban
Problems with third-party Twitter apps began to emerge last week, when several such apps suddenly stopped working. At first, it was thought to be a technical glitch with the API, given that Twitter has laid off thousands of developers in recent months.
However, it has since emerged that it was a deliberate, unannounced switch in policy to ban all third-party Twitter clients, forcing users to either use the official Twitter apps/website or leave the service.
The freshly reworded Twitter developer agreement now says developers must not “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to Twitter applications”, reversing a 16-year policy of allowing third-party clients.
Twitter’s sudden decision to pull the plug on third-party apps has angered many users.
Twitter has made no public comment on the changes to its developer agreement and there is no Twitter communications department to contact for comment.
