Twitter tells developers to 'write something else,' no more new third-party clients

If you remember the boot that quite a few UberMedia clients received from Twitterearlier, and it wouldn't be surprising to see more of that happen, and not just with UberMedia clients. The company announced on Friday a clear mandate: create apps that use Twitter, not Twitter apps.

In reality, since Twitter first began launching official Twitter clients in the Spring of 2010, it was obvious this would come to a head.

Twitter is happy with apps that add a Twitter aspect to them. Examples would be Instagram and Foursquare, which allow users to add their Twitter accounts to the app. Third-party Twitter clients are facing an uphill battle anyway: Twitter platform chief Ryan Sarver said that 90 percent of users are using official Twitter clients.

Here is part of what Sarver said in a post:

If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained.

As we point out above, we need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way. This is already happening organically - the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking. According to our data, 90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis.

In contrast, the number of successful applications and companies in the Twitter ecosystem that focus on areas outside of the mainstream consumer client experience has grown quickly, and this is a trend we want to continue to support and help grow. Twitter will always be a platform on which a smart developer with a great idea and some cool technology can build a great company of his or her own. And, with record user growth, there has never been a better time to build into Twitter.

One key thing Twitter wants is a consistent user experience. There is, he said, much confusion over varying UI. He said,

If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience.

He has a point, but if things are that consistent, why bother with any other apps? One reason would be features.

The official Twitter account still only allows one account, at least on Android. Most of the others we have tried allow more. That's just one example. Checking through the comments at the Twitter app in the Android Market shows a little bit of anger, and even some people uninstalling the app in protest. A few comments below:

No more third party twitter apps means i have no use for twitter.

This is crap. It's the worst twitter app I've ever used, and now they want to stop 3rd party devs from writing new twitter apps? Get real.

uninstalling this a protest against twitter. they just announced that thrid party devs should no longer build twitter apps. screw you twitter im out

That comment about 90 percent of users using official Twitter clients seems to run counter to the enmity that seems to be in those comments. Additionally, a blog post by Helloform puts it very well, speaking of how Twitter got to where it is and the early days with no officient clients and a not-too-great website.

In those days, people stuck around because there were third party clients that allowed them to use twitter without refreshing a page all the time (you still need to actually click a link today, but you’ve certainly come a long way), or without even using a browser. Those clients let people use your service without disturbing their workflow (well, to an extent anyway). In those days, and I hope my memory isn’t failing me, the number of tweets from third party clients was dramatically higher than those “from the web”.

And so knowing a bit of your history, I find myself in the odd position of both loving your service and your people, and feeling like you are betraying what got you where you are today. How many users did you get out of 3rd parties? How many new features did you integrate upstream that were born in 3rd party clients? You are basically biting the hand that fed you for a very long time.

What you you readers think? Would you prefer choice, or consistency, or perhaps even only one Twitter client? After all, if an end user doesn't like the UI of say, TweetCaster, he can always switch to say, the official Twitter client, or vice versa.

Via: Twitter, Mashable, Helloform