Tweetro Slams into Twitter 100K Token Limit

http://www.windowsobserver.com/?p=17250

by aaronbrethorst • 14 years ago

64 15 14 years ago

Shank• 14 years ago

The irony here is that the policy is to direct people to use official clients for Twitter, of which one exists on Windows 8, aside from the website.

The error is so non-descriptive that users are likely going to blame the app developer for being unable to use the app, rather than Twitter for having an arbitrarily defined token limit.

FuzzyDunlop• 14 years ago

It'd be less frustrating if they didn't completely neglect their official clients. And their website isn't exactly perfect, either.

Shame, really, because custom Twitter clients have been great for experimenting with the API and even UX design, and it being a full on client means enough people use them to test those experiments.

ghshephard• 14 years ago

I understand that the twitter 100K Token limit applies on a per application basis.

What prevents an publisher from releasing their App with multiple names/incarnations/artwork - each of which would have 100K users.

I.E. Tweetro Pro, Tweetro Advanced, Tweetro Universal, Tweetro Media edition, etc...

mochizuki• 14 years ago

Theoretically nothing, but who wants to break up their product like that? The number of different versions would scare away users and they probably wouldn't reach 100k in the first place. How would they identify versions that have reached a token limit?

masklinn• 14 years ago

Actually theoretically Twitter will probably revoke all their tokens and their API key for trying to run around their rules.

joeblau• 14 years ago

They'd probably get all of their Twitter API key's revoked for "Duplicate Functionality." The 1.1 Developer Rules of the road are pretty harsh if you're syndicating tweets.

MatthewPhillips2• 14 years ago

What prevents it is the non-existence of a contract. Twitter devs live at the mercy of Twitter Inc, which can and will alter the rules as it benefits them. You're not going to skirt the rules with a technicality.

dreadsword• 14 years ago

What is going on at Twitter that they would think its in their long-term best interests to cap API usage, as opposed to, for example, having a paid offering, a la GMaps?

I understand their drive standardization, pushing their own apps, etc. but at some point, one starts to think that if walling off their garden is really their aim, they should just deprecate the API and be done with it already, rather than the death of 1000 cuts that they're subjecting the ecosystem too.

blntechie• 14 years ago

They don't even have an app for Windows 8 to begin with. If they are going to prioritize their monetization over user experience, they're going to learn it hard some day.

michaelt• 14 years ago

Sometimes when an organization wants rid of something (semi-) popular they use a two step process - first change it so it's unpopular, then kill it.

That way you don't have to deal with the PR of killing something popular.

MatthewPhillips2• 14 years ago

That's not how advertising companies work. When someone pays you money to advertise for them, they are extremely particular about how the message is delivered. Twitter can not promise its customers that its message will be delivered per their agreement if they aren't directly in control of the client.

rjurney• 14 years ago

Start charging money for Tweetro. Problem solved.

myoffe• 14 years ago

It looks like developing an app for the Twitter API is a lose-lose situation. If your app becomes popular, you are bound to one day hit one of their API limits or just simply be revoked access altogether.

dusing• 14 years ago

Twitter promotes a couple companies to buy tweets above the 100k API limit. We use Datasift for our app and it's fairly cheap and painless. Their API has a few nice things too like batching.

There are options, it looks like if you are going into building a Twitter client and you are not charging for the app, you're going to have a bad time.

loudin• 14 years ago

If it weren't for the many applications that helped grow Twitter, this service would not be nearly as successful as it is today. Imposing these arcane limits is a slap in the face to the developers who made Twitter so popular in the first place.

This should also serve as a warning to people who build on top of other social networks. These networks oftentimes can only rely on their own information to make money, which increases the probability that they will block access to user data (or at least make it very difficult to access).

Tweetro Slams into Twitter 100K Token Limit

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