Snippet: Look What They Did to My Boy, Ollie! ☇
The Iconfactory providing more news than Twitter:
Last night at about 7:30pm PST, Twitterrific customers started reporting problems accessing Twitter via the iOS app.
News quickly spread on Twitter and Mastodon that a wide range of third party apps like Twitterrific, Tweetbot, Echofon, and many others had been disabled. Strangely, Twitterrific for macOS continues to work normally. We cannot say for certain why some clients are unaffected, but it seems possible that there is a new (seemingly unstated and unannounced) policy that is only being applied to apps with large numbers of users.
There’s been no official word from Twitter about what’s going on, but that’s unsurprising since the new owner eliminated the employees dedicated to keeping the API up and running smoothly, including the developer evangelists who previously provided communication with third-parties.
We wouldn’t know whom to reach out to at Twitter even if such people existed. We’re in the dark just as much as you are, sadly.
Apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot have made Twitter way more enjoyable on Apple’s platforms way back to the early days (and even more in this stupid algorithm-centric era). Funny enough Ollie, the “mascot” for Twitterrific predates the actual Twitter bird logo and was sometimes mistakenly used in place of it. If this is a quiet shutdown of the API to the most popular third-party apps, it’s a shame that the new owner and his crew were such cowards that they can’t even address it directly and instead have left everyone in the dark for hours days.
Update: Craig Hockenberry (from the Iconfactory) addressed the situation on his personal blog and I couldn’t agree more:
What bothers me about Twitterrific’s final day is that it was not dignified. There was no advance notice for its creators, customers just got a weird error, and no one is explaining what’s going on. We had no chance to thank customers who have been with us for over a decade. Instead, it’s just another scene in their ongoing shit show.
But I guess that’s what you should expect from a shitty person.