Twitter has updated its developer agreement to explicitly prohibit third-party app makers from creating their own clients using the company’s API.
On Thursday, Twitter updated its developer’s agreement with a clause prohibiting app developers from making their own Twitter clients. The change comes a few days after developers began reporting their apps no longer worked.
The “restrictions” section of Twitter’s development agreement has been expanded to help “enforce its long-standing API rules,” according to the company’s development Twitter account. It noted that, as a result, some apps might not work.
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However, as Engadget points out, it does not align with the company’s history. Third-party apps have been central to Twitter use for most of the social media platform’s history.
Twitterific, for example, has been a crucial part of Twitter’s history since the beginning. Twitterific had a native iOS app before Twitter did and is credited with coining the word “tweet.”
As a result of the API restriction, developers have begun pulling their apps out of the App Store.
