Twitter revises guidelines for 3rd party client apps

Twitter is the place for knowing what’s going on with the world. If you want to stay in touch with Twitter while being mobile, some of the best options have been certain third-party apps for streaming Twitter instead of Twitter’s official app. While this has been the case for some time now, Twitter now wants to push users towards its own apps and web clients by introducing some new guidelines.

In one of their recent blog posts, Twitter announced that they will be withdrawing the support for certain old APIs that some third-party Twitter client apps have been relying on. One of the most important features that will be absent from those apps will be auto-refreshing — users will now have to manually refresh their Twitter feeds in those apps. Additionally, the APIs would also not allow push notifications and Direct Messages controls.

However, the official Twitter app for Android and iOS, as well as the mobile version of Twitter.com will continue to support all the features that users rely on. Users on the Twitter-owned apps and portals will be able to better organise Tweets to mitigate troll-like behaviour, consistent app navigation and real-time Tweet engagement count, control over your Twitter data, improved accessibility support and notifications and Direct Message controls.

Additionally, certain features will remain exclusive to the official apps and the web portal. Therefore, users will be able to use Explore (including Moments), Periscopes, Polls, Bookmarks and Tweet-level controls for feedback.

It’s worthwhile to note that several of the apps exclusive to the official Twitter app and web portals have been borrowed from the third-party client apps. Twitter acknowledges that, saying, “There are good reasons you love the various Twitter apps you have used over the years, and we’re grateful for the developers who build them. We’re still strongly committed to ongoing investment in our developer ecosystem. Our investments are focused on helping developers create fundamentally new and innovative ways to use Twitter. Also, we’re continuing to invest in TweetDeck, our desktop web client for professionals who need more advanced tools.”

(source)