Bad news for Hootsuite, Tweetbot, Ecofon and a host of other third-party Twitter clients: your services are about to get a lot less free advertising.
The social media giant, already accused of making life harder for such services, has quietly made another change: when browsing Twitter.com, you will no longer be able to see how each tweet was posted.
The change already happened in Twitter’s mobile app, but removing it from the website is a different matter. Previously, Twitter appeared to be following a policy of providing as much information about each tweet on its website as possible, even if you had to click on “Details” in order to find it.
This feature allowed you to see, for example, that a favored celebrity posts their tweets via Tweetdeck (a popular third-party service acquired by Twitter last year). On the other hand, it also gave rise to services that would let you schedule tweets with the appearance that they were posted on the web.
So all tweets now look more homogenous, and your privacy is protected. But it’s hard not to see this in the context of the wider story: Twitter clamping down on third-party services in a variety of ways, in a bid to control how its content looks (and more importantly, how it is monetized.)
The Twitter API restrictions have led to the popular hashtag #OccupyTwitter, and given rise to an ad-free crowd-funded Twitter rival, App.net. Ironically, it was an App.net user who first noticed the change on Twitter.com.
Does Twitter restrict the developer community at its peril, or is it too big to have to worry about that now? Let us know your take in the comments.
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