Third-party Twitter apps such as Plume, Twitterrific, Talon, Tweetings, and Tweetbot may stop working on the social networking platform sometime this year, with the people behind them already warning users that the apps may lose features such as push notifications and auto-refresh timeline.
This is in line with an announcement made by Twitter that it will be removing third-party access to the “streaming services” section of its API after June 19, 2018. While this is bound to happen at some point, fans of the affected apps will at least have some more time to enjoy them after Twitter said that it will be delaying the scheduled June 19th deprecation date, but the company further added that it “will provide at least 90 days’ notice from when the Account Activity API becomes generally available” with “more specifics on timing to come” at a later date.
Last year we announced our plan to retire Site Streams & User Streams, and replace them with the Account Activity API (currently in beta). We are delaying the scheduled June 19th deprecation date.
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) April 6, 2018
Twitter wants people to use the official app instead of relying on third-party apps, which defeats the meaning of supporting third-party apps in the first place. What remains to be seen is whether the new Account Activity API can handle third-party Twitter apps with their streaming services, something developers already say will be affected by Twitter’s decision.
In fact, if you are one of the developers out there who isn’t happy about this new step by Twitter, you can air your voice through the Twitter account @TwitterDev and maybe, just maybe, the company will hear your cries and back down.
