The new regime, an update to the Twitter API, mean the number of people allowed to user popular third-party clients such as Echofon and Tweetbot will be capped. Twitter’s own software is likely to benefit; the firm warned outsiders not to create competing apps.
Developers who create new Twitter apps will only be allowed to have a maximum of 100,000 users. Existing software with more than 100,000 users will be allowed to double their user base before hitting Twitter’s cap.
It is among a host of changes that grant Twitter more power over how tweets are distributed and presented. The firm has been gradually taking back control after enjoying rapid growth with liberal rules that allowed all sorts of services to reuse its content.
The latest rules, which were published on Twitter’s blog, attracted a torrent of criticism from “power-users” and software developers.
Marco Arment, the developer of the popular iOS app Instapaper, which currently allows users to save tweets to view later alongside other material from the web, described the new clampdown as “far-reaching”.
“This is very broad and will bite more services and apps than you may expect,” he said of one new rule that bans outside services from mixing up tweets with other content.
“It’s probably the clause that caused the dispute with LinkedIn, and why Flipboard CEO Mike McCue just left Twitter’s board,” he added.
Read more: The Telegraph
