Tech

Access to the Twitter API will be paid

You will surely remember that a few weeks ago we told you that Twitter had blocked access to its API, which caused Clients designed by third parties to use this social network will stop working. At first, the general opinion was that this would be caused by a technical problem, but a few hours later it emerged, due to a leak from the company’s Slack group, that it was a known and intentional action, not a bug.

Quickly, all kinds of theories began to circulate, and even supposed statements by Twitter workers of a singularly wide range: from that it was because they were introducing changes to improve it or that the servers were saturated to support it, to that the new management of The social network did not like that many users could consult Twitter without seeing the advertising and, consequently, it had decided to block their access.

We could also see some voices indicating that in Elon Musk’s desperate race to improve Twitter monetization, everything pointed to the fact that sooner or later access to it would end up being paid, with a free and basic version, another for subscription and even a possible third with the increasingly common pay-per-use model. And those who pointed in that direction, unfortunately for the community of developers who use Twitter, were absolutely right.

It is neither a rumor nor a leak, as you can see in the previous tweet, the social network has confirmed that As of February 9, free access to the Twitter API will be removed. Translated, as of that date, all developers whose applications and services use any of the functions of the social network will have to go through the checkout to be able to maintain said access. Otherwise, your developments will lose their usefulness.

This is undoubtedly a rather risky decision, since there are many professionals who use Twitter, along with other social networks, through third-party apps and services. Moreover, since always and especially during his early years, such third-party services played a key role in the growth and the success story of the social network. Closing the door on them now can cut off access for many users and therefore negatively impact Twitter traffic volume.

It is even more striking if we take into account the current rates. Unless the announced basic tier is cheaper, today an app or service that does 500 requests to Google servers (this number is really low) has to pay nothing less than 149 dollars per month, while the top at the top is found at 10,000 requests, at a cost of $2,499 per month. That is to say that, unless prices drop a lot, there will not only be developers who do not want to pay, there will also be many who do want to but who cannot.

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