Twitter APIs Are Going Very Wrong
I mean, really, really wrong, even when you pay serious money to Twitter.
Leaving aside Twitter owner Elon Musk‘s latest 13-year-old boy joke of “renaming” Twitter, “Titter,” Twitter’s most serious new annoyance is its new API pricing structure. It’s both irritating developers and driving some of them out of business.
First, to catch you up, there are now three Twitter API tiers. The new API pricing includes a bare-bones free level, primarily targeting content posting bots; a $100 per month basic level; and a costly, $42,000 per month, enterprise level. Yes, that is one heck of a jump from the basic to the enterprise levels. As for the old access levels–Standard (for v1.1), Essential and Elevated (for v2), and Premium? — they’re history.
Cash Grab
Critics argue that these new API offerings are a blatant cash grab. The free tier provides a mere 1,500 post requests per month and access to Login with Twitter. The basic tier, aimed at hobbyists and students, offers 50,000 post requests and 10,000 read requests per app per month. That’s even less than it sounds for practical purposes. Many developers who tried to subscribe to the new basic tier have found out to their dismay that they were already over the post and read limits.
Previously, Twitter Essential and Elevated access levels enabled programmers to access 500,000 to 2 million tweets per month. Now, app programmers who need that level of usage must subscribe to the enterprise plan.
This comes after other recent Twitter decisions have alienated its developer community. First, Twitter got rid of its open source teams. The company has also terminated other developer-related projects, such as the Twitter Toolbox, for app discovery and cut off numerous third-party clients and alternative Twitter apps.
With the release of the new API pricing, numerous independent developers announced they would have to shut down their apps. This included small service creators who were only generating hundreds to thousands of dollars monthly, The new API subscription tiers priced them out of the market. The middle tier isn’t enough to support a business, while the top tier is beyond their means. The result? Early-stage developers can’t afford to enter the market.
Cut off Access
Worse still, Twitter cut off API access to even some of its more successful Twitter app developers who were willing to pay the exorbitant new top rate. For example, Tibo Louis-Lucas, the co-founder of the Twitter content-creating web app Tweet Hunter plaintively tweeted, “Tweet Hunter has been banned from Twitter. 5,426 Twitter power users are affected. No warning, no email, nada. We have no idea why.” More tellingly, he continued, “When Twitter rolled out the new Enterprise pricing, we applied on day 1. No news.” Days later and after publicly shaming Twitter on Twitter, they finally got access again to the APIs. This is no way to support developers.
What’s that, you say? Didn’t Twitter open source its recommendation algorithm? Well, not really, if you mean open sourcing code in any meaningful manner. Besides, without API access, it won’t do you a lick of good.
The bottom line is Twitter is, for all intents and purposes dismantling its third-party application ecosystem. Even if Twitter were to suddenly change course — hey even as I wrote this story, the news broke that Musk was renaming Twitter to X — would you trust Musk to have your back as a developer? I sure wouldn’t.
