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Various third-party Twitter apps have mysteriously stopped working.
Twitter has long been noted for supporting other apps that allow users to access its services. Apps such as Twitterrific and Tweetbot allow users to view posts and create new posts through apps created by third-party developers.
However, early Friday morning, we discovered that neither of these apps had access to the Twitter data they needed to operate. And each of them said they didn’t know what was causing the problem.
When users tried to open the app, they received an error message that they were unable to log in. The developer of these apps said he was aware of the problem, but said he had not received any information from Twitter as to why the problem occurred.
The first-party Twitter app, known only by the company’s name, appeared to function normally. Additionally, some smaller apps still worked.
Some have speculated that this issue is the result of a decision to intentionally drop support for third-party clients. Others have suggested that the issue may just be a bug.
“Tweetbot and other clients are having trouble logging into Twitter. “We hope this is just a temporary glitch and we will let you know as soon as we have more information.”
A Twitterrific developer said the same thing.
“We are aware that Twitterrific is having trouble communicating with Twitter,” it wrote on its official account. “We don’t yet know the root cause, but we’re trying to find out. Please stay tuned. We apologize.”
One user responded to the post, writing, “I blame Elon.” “So do we,” he replied Twitterrific, but did not indicate whether he believed the issue was intentional.
Tweetbot developer Paul Haddad said he had hoped his app had accidentally broken, but hadn’t heard back in any case.
“Hopefully what’s happening on Twitter is just automated spam protection bots erroneously pausing the right apps, or something similar,” he wrote.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have many contacts on Twitter anymore. I don’t think we’ll get a definitive answer any time soon.”
In reply to Haddad’s post made on Mastodon, some pointed out that the problem could be a bug in the affected app, as other apps are still working. However, some have suggested that the specific nature of the outage may mean that a popular third-party app was precisely the subject of the shutdown.
Twitter no longer maintains a communications team. Neither its official account nor its new CEO, Elon Musk (who has made many controversial changes to Twitter since taking over the service), posted an update on the matter.
In November, Elon Musk announced plans to remove information about tweets that would indicate what the tweet was posted to. For example, whether it was the official iPhone client or a third-party app. “Literally nobody knows why we did that,” he said at the time.
In response, hashtag inventor Chris Messina said that, among other things, it provides visibility to third-party clients experiencing problems. Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, responded to the tweet by saying, “You’re right.”
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