On August the 16th Twitter is removing its old, free and popular api. Twitter gave a blog post on the 16th May Explaining its new tiered api system. Basically free gets you access to 15 accounts and from there you have to pay $339 for 25 users and $629 for 50 up to a whooping 2,899  for 250.

This move sets to severely limit or even kill popular third-party Twitter apps like Tweet bot and Twitterrific which are a customized Twitter with no ads or tracking.

You can’t spin it any other way Twitter, you want people to stop using these third-party apps and use your own app so you can spam ads at them and track them. The hunger for user data and analytics has got to Twitters head. It’s a win win, people will pay for the overpriced api and more users will come back to the ad fested app.

The sad thing is there is nothing users can do, they ever shut up and use the Twitter app or leave the platform all together. Twitter isn’t great for me personally, but it sits above Facebook and Instagram in terms of rubbish content, tracking and being slimy.

The words Twitter used for this api change screams rubbish from the very top…

When we announced our plans to retire and replace Site Streams, User Streams, and our REST Direct Message endpoints, we did so as part of our efforts to improve the developer experience and provide a sustainable way to help businesses engage with those looking to connect with them.

Thats not improving developer experience its removing developer experience. It’s a simple cash grab from Twitter and im sure they could have done it without removing and ruining what was once a great api.

If you want to read how this change is going down with the third-party Twitter app developers check out apps-of-a-feather.com.

This Twitter api depreciation has ruffled feathers and above all else its disappointing to see Twitter kill of creation and innovation all for more ads and tracking.