Twitterific and Tweetbot, third-party Twitter clients, have experienced crashes. One of the creators of Tweetbot, Paul Haddad, wrote in Mastodon that the developers have not received any messages from the company, so it is not known what caused the problem.
Twitter users and some media speculate that this is a step toward completely shutting down third-party clients for the social network. However, other similar programs work, in particular, Fenix 2 or Albatross.
We’re aware that Twitterrific is having problems communicating with Twitter. We can’t know what the root cause is, but we do it to the end. Please stay tuned and apologies.
— Twitterrific (@Twitterrific) January 13, 2023
Third-party applications rely on the Twitter API to retrieve data from the service. The issue has been controversial in the past, as the company neglected tools for third-party developers. That appears to have changed before Elon Musk bought the company, though his stance on Twitter alternatives is unknown.
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It’s hard to tell if the third-party client failure is related to the API. Attempting certain calls from personal Twitter developer accounts seem to work, while Twitter’s own API Explorer tool is currently down. Most error messages are related to authentication issues.
At the time of publication, no tweets from the official Twitter account, the support account, or Elon Musk had been posted about the apparent outage.
Previously, Twitter posts added view counters. The new feature will allow you to see how many users have seen your tweet, but other people can also see your personal stats. Musk announced the feature on Dec. 1 and hinted that he’s trying to make text and image posts on the platform look like video posts that already have public views. He also said that the feature is meant to show how alive the platform is.
There is also an ongoing renewal of the long-suffering Twitter Blue subscription, which Musk has canceled and then launched several times, each time announcing a new price: from $7.99 monthly to $8, and $11 exclusively for Apple users. According to the information on the support page of the social network, owners of the “blue tick” will have the opportunity to:
- create folders with tweets;
- change the application icon on the phone;
- customize new theme options;
- configure the navigation bar (you can place from 2 to 6 quick access elements);
- create a selection of the best tweets on the page;
- cancel the tweet (but before other users had time to see it);
- “priority display in conversations”;
- upload videos up to 60 minutes, 2 GB in size and 1080p resolution (web version only).
Source: The Verge
