It’s a sad day for our favorite Twitter accounts, as we may soon have to say goodbye to them. Late Wednesday night, the official Twitter Developer account announced that the platform will stop offering free access to the platform’s API on February 9.
Access to Twitter API v1.1 and v2 will soon be replaced by the “paid basic level”, which may hinder third party support further. Twitter API It allows third party developers to access publicly available Twitter data to build bots or applications for the site. We’re not just talking about bots like RemindMe_OfThis that basically remind users of tweets they come across; In the past, researchers have used the API for Track hate speech online.
It seems that the developers are trying to take advantage of the huge amount of data on the platform. like The developer’s Twitter account said in a threadAnd “Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion tweets, with billions more each week… Twitter’s data is among the most powerful data sets in the world.” The new price point of the tier was not disclosed. Instead, it was hinted at by the account saying it will provide more details sometime next week.
gain money
This appears to be yet another attempt by Twitter (and its controversial CEO Elon Musk) to make money from the platform. Purchaseable APIs are nothing new on Twitter, but they are more than that Business oriented. Novice users can collect a set of “Tweets posted within the last 30 days” based on a specific query using the Premium Search API, but doing so means Twitter push Up to $2,500 for up to 10,000 orders per month. However, is it a wise move when advertisers are fleeing in droves?
This does not mean that the platform will charge a developer thousands of dollars to use the Twitter API to build a bot (we don’t know that yet). It is entirely possible that the developers just pay $99 per month or less to reach. However, given the latter Block third party apps As part of “enforcing … long-standing API rules” and $12.5 billion is a mountain of debt Elon Musk is so under control because of his Twitter buyout, it’s hard to imagine things will stay cheap.
For giants like Google, this probably changes nothing. But for small developers, like the developers behind Ace Attorney Court Bot on TwitterThis spells doom for them unless they can somehow raise money for the expected high costs.
user cry
The outcry was deafening on Twitter. Search the developer’s thread and quote tweets, and you’ll find nearly 50,000 users criticizing the end of the free API. 1 user, Luca Hammer, said that “this change will destroy research, activity, and commercial projects” and will stop “working on non-commercial projects that use the API.” Hammer goes on to say that he will “have to re-evaluate which commercial ventures are still viable”. Others are short noticeAnd described as harsh.
At this point, we would have liked to ask Twitter about this new move; However, their press contacts are nowhere to be found. We’ll be sure to get in touch…if we ever find one.
It’s a shame that Twitter continues to turn its back on developers. APIs are a great way for users to improve a service without having to spend time and money developing a new feature. If you are thinking of creating bots using an API in another service, it is recommended to use some of them Endpoint protection to keep you safe.