Fenix, Twitterrific, Tweetbot, YoruFukurou, and other third-party Twitter apps seem unresponsive for a few hours. An API access problem is suspected. But the causes of this failure are not clear.
” I am in PLS this morning. My Ad-Free and Algorithm-Free Third-Party Twitter App No Longer Works “. Here is the message shared this Friday, January 13 by a colleague, while trying to connect this morning to his favorite software. And it is far from being the only testimony of this kind. On Twitter, other internet users share the same dismay.
A simple API failure?
In question, a problem accessing the Twitter API. This is the programming interface that allows you to connect to the social network servers and retrieve information (API stands for Application Programming Interface). This allows, for example, third-party solutions to exist, as an alternative to the official application.
Neither the official account dedicated to Twitter support neither the one specialized precisely in the API of the community site did not post anything about the incident that netizens are experiencing. On the other hand, the profiles of several third-party applications such as Twitterrific and Fenix took the floor to report concerns about access to the API.
” Fenix for Android is currently experiencing issues communicating with Twitter, like many other third-party clients », wrote the corresponding account on the morning of January 13. ” We are aware that Twitterrific has communication issues with Twitter. We don’t know yet what the cause is, but we are trying to find out. », reacted his rival.
” Tweetbot and other clients are having trouble connecting to Twitter. We reached out to Twitter for more details, but got no response. We hope this is only a temporary issue and will let you know as soon as we know more. », also indicated Tweetbot.
The circumstances of this disruption are vague and two hypotheses face each other: a simple temporary outage, which could be partly caused by the clear cuts demanded by Elon Musk in the workforce of Twitter to reduce the company’s payroll — this might have caused a lack of staff to take care of the API.
Another possibility, much darker for the future of third-party customers: Twitter ends the API or drastically tightens its access conditions, because these alternative tools are so many distribution channels that escape monetization, monitoring statistics, the algorithmic analysis of data and, more generally, the vision of Elon Musk.
This possibility seems all the more plausible since Tweetdeck, an alternative to Twitter, does not suffer from any obvious problem. However, there is a big difference here: Tweetdeck belongs to Twitter. This mismatch between third-party apps and official tools feeds suspicions of a deliberate plan — just like the ban on posting links to Mastodon.
The community site seems desperate for its monetization prospects. On January 11, The Information site reported that Twitter’s efforts to woo advertisers have so far failed to pay off. One of the giants of the sector has reduced its spending by 40 to 50% on the platform since the takeover of the site by Elon Musk.
The personality of Elon Musk is probably not totally unrelated to the recent choices of advertisers to reduce the sails or to turn away completely from Twitter – the American entrepreneur has multiplied – and on many subjects – provocations and sensational outings , while often changing feet, which gave an impression of permanent instability at Twitter.
By this yardstick, the API lock could appear as a – somewhat desperate – attempt to limit breakage, by forcing Internet users to return to the official application, to see advertising – advertising which seems to have increased lately. , and which is also considered to be of lesser quality, on subjects not always related to the centers of interest.