Twitter’s API Update Cuts Off Oxygen to Third-Party Clients

Twitter unveiled some of the upcoming changes to version 1.1 of its API that could have a drastic impact on the service’s third-party ecosystem.

As promised, Twitter is squeezing the knot around the neck of third-party Twitter apps that mimic Twitter.com with a more stringent set of API rules.

The changes in Twitter API V 1.1 are all designed to foster “a consistent Twitter experience” and include universal endpoint authentication, per-endpoint rate-limiting and a number of crucial changes to the “Developer Rules of the Road.” It may be the latter changes that prove most troubling to the remaining collection of third-party, consumer-focused Twitter clients.

The new rules start by transforming the fuzzier “Display Guidelines” into “Display Requirements.” Guidelines are something you can choose to work with or not. Rules are, well, rules. Those clients that do not adhere to rules like proper scaling per device could have their application key revoked.

Similarly, all of these apps have to be certified by Twitter before pre-installation (say prior to consumer delivery). Failure to do so could result in application key revocation.

Twitter may also be seeking to limit the number of users these third-party tools can have. Its last Rules of the Road update says that developers who need a large number of user tokens will have to work directly with Twitter to acquire them. The company does acknowledge that some third-party developer apps are already past these new limits and is willing to work with them, but only to a point. When they grow to 200% of their current size, they’ll need to get the okay from Twitter to grow further.

Paul Haddard of Tapbots, the company behind the popular iOS client Tweetbot responded to the new user token caps, saying:

Paul Haddad@tapbot_paul

The sky is not falling, I’d obviously prefer that there wasn’t any cap, but the current cap is pretty huge and we aren’t going anywhere.

17 Aug 12

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He also added that Tweebot for Mac is “still on track” and that the beta will be out soon.

Twitter developers currently using version 1.0 of the Twitter API will have six months to migrate to version 1.1.

Shifting the Focus on the Ecosystem

By changing the rules for developers — especially developers of traditional Twitter clients — Twitter is also hoping to refocus developer activity on its overall ecosystem.

In the post outlining the Twitter API 1.1 changes, Twitter’s Michael Sippey organized apps that use Twitter data into four quadrants.

Going forward, Twitter is explicitly telling developers not to focus on the upper right-hand quadrant — traditional Twitter clients and syndication — and is instead urging developers to focus on other quadrants for their apps and services.

This mirrors advice Twitter gave to developers) back in March 2011 — focus on projects that are not traditional Twitter clients.

Although Storify and Favstar.fm are mentioned as falling into the upper-right quadrant, Ryan Sarver, director of platform at Twitter, clarified that those two services are examples of what types of activity Twitter wants to see moving forward.

Ostensibly, that means that pure third-party clients, such as Tweetbot, Echofon and Twitterrific are out of luck.

Moving on From Here

The early response from some of the major Twitter client developers is one of an uneasy calm. Twitter has been threatening to take a harder stance against third-party clients for almost 18 months and many developers were already operating under the assumption that another shoe was about to drop.

The question becomes, will these developers — many of whom have helped shape Twitter as a service and community at a fundamental level — continue to invest in the platform.

Right now, it’s too early to tell. Still, today’s announcement is a great endorsement for Dalton Caldwell’sApp.net. App.net recently raised more than $600,000 in crowdfunding with a goal of creating a Twitter-like platform that isn’t funded by advertising and that doesn’t limit users or developers rights with the API.

The impact on users won’t be visible until the new changes take effect — but for some users, it could mean a drastically different experience.

What do you think of Twitter’s API changes? Let us know in the comments.

Five ways Windows 8 overhauls the PC

Windows 8 makes numerous and substantial changes to how we use computers. Here are the most important ones that you'll have to get used to.

In 2009, J.J. Abrams rebooted the fictional Star Trek chronology and franchise. In 2011, DC Comics did the same with its superheroes. But now Microsoft is about to reboot the very real Windows operating system, and it will forever change how we use computers.

Windows 8 is Microsoft's answer to the question of how to integrate mobile and desktop computing. For the most part, it succeeds, but it's an ambitious answer that will be best understood only when many people to stop thinking of desktop and mobile as discrete entities.

Touch will drive Windows 8's buzz, but it's so much more. The biggest change in Windows 8 is that it is designed for touch screens, but that doesn't mean that the keyboard and mouse are dead. In fact, to see that the opposite is true you have to look no further than the iPad. Apple's dominating and innovative tablet owns its market, but it drives a booming business in third-party keyboard solutions.

Plans for Windows 8

Now that we've seen the final Windows 8, will you get it when it's released in October?

• Yes, I'll be upgrading my current Windows computer.
• Yes, I'll be buying a new computer running Windows 8.
• Maybe, but I'll stick with what I've got until we see how Windows 8 works.
• No, it's time to get a Mac, Chromebook, or Linux box.
• Other (expand in comments).

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Instead of being confined to a mouse, Microsoft is saying that personal computers -- and mobile devices, for that matter -- are moving toward a variety of control solutions. Touch is one of these, as is voice, but so are the traditional keyboard for lengthy document writing and the pointer. The two-button mouse as we know it may be dying, but it is hard to imagine a scenario where you'll never want the precise control that one provides.

Smartphones and tablets have driven touch popularization, and Microsoft is taking a big risk bringing it so forcefully to desktops and laptops, common wisdom says. And yet, the very first thing I did when I got a first-generation Chromebook was swipe at the screen. It was a subconscious reaction to the new device, and of course it resulted in nothing happening because Chromebooks don't have touch screens.

And this morning, I pointed a colleague's 10-year-old daughter visiting the CNET offices at my Toshiba DX1215 running Windows 8 RTM and asked her to use it. I gave no instructions or hints to her about the edges and Charms bar. As someone who has spent a decade on Apple products, she looked at it for a second, swiped the screen once, and tapped the Cut the Rope tile.

On her way to blasting through the first five levels, she said, "It's like a giant iPad." Touch will no longer be the purview of devices sized 10.1 inches or smaller, and touch is how many young people will grow up using computers. Do not underestimate touch, you computing curmudgeons.

Windows 8 kills chrome. No doubt that Internet Explorer 10 is the best version of that much-maligned browser so far, but we're not talking about Google Chrome competitors. Lowercase "chrome" refers to an app's interface, the static visual elements that anchor an app's features. Microsoft's default apps hide most of an app's chrome, and other app developers already are taking their cues from Redmond's guidelines and lead.

Basically, Windows 8 apps do a great job of getting out of the way of the content they're meant to show you. From one edge of the screen to the other, all you see is content because the chrome has been hidden under the four edges of the screen.

Windows' lessons from the edges go beyond app chrome. The steepest part of the Windows 8 learning curve will be figuring out which app and operating system controls are hidden under which edges. The rule of thumb is that the left and right edges belong to Windows 8, while the top and bottom edges belong to apps, although this isn't strictly true. (App settings are often accessible only from the Settings charm on the right edge.)

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The important lesson here is that the swipe gesture can be applied in ways we haven't yet seen in Android or iOS, which allows the content to shine through. Microsoft's engineering on the concept of hiding chrome and controls under the edge has made it accessible to touch pads, traditional mice, and hot keys.

Windows 8 kills your icons, too. For the entirety of its existence, the icon has been a static, stale program identifier. It's occasionally gotten little pop-up indicators, but basically it's been small and unchanging. Windows 8's tiles create a unique and innovative method to reveal real-time content on screen, without forcing you to dive into the world of the app.

It sounds minor, but tiles will change your workflow on PCs because you won't be immersing yourself in an app every time you want an update. The implications of this for app-usage could be huge. It won't be good for organizations that measure how much time you spend using a particular app, but it does make sense for how we use computers.

Windows 8 introduces the lapdesktabbooktop. Whatever you want to call it, Windows 8 makes desktop computing portable by unifying the operating system across devices. Not much is known about the coming shape, style, and price of Windows 8 hardware, but we've already seen some touch screen laptops (mostly at Computex) that come close to the thinness of a tablet.

The unification will make it easy to connect the necessities of desk work peripherals, and then disconnect and take the tablet or laptop on the go. This is where the overall features and functionality of the operating system have a chance to revolutionize the devices we use.

Core to this idea will be attractive form factors and affordable price points, but Windows 8's combination of touch and robust productivity tools could herald the maturation of portable computing. With "Windows 8-lite" Windows RT running Office 2013, Windows 8 will be demonstrating that mobile doesn't mean underpowered.