[dan1234]

Twitter likely feel that it's easier to monitise users if they're using official clients. The API and the early developers have served their purpose in attracting enough users, now they're more of a hindrance so time to cut them off.

I'm not saying I agree with this policy (I absolutely don't!).

[eaxbin]

I both understand and don't understand.

WHy don't they "just" serve ads using the API as well? And ad a line in the EULA saying something like: "Not showing these ads will mean termination of your Developer Account" or something like that

[hboon]

Looking at the product as it is now, offering an API for third party app developers that clones the primary timeline browsing experience is a no-no because Twitter gives up control over how they can craft their product experience. For example, look at their official app's Discover tab. They can't offer something like that and iterate quickly easily across all apps.

Serving ads through the API alone also limits ads delivery. For eg., they might want to display full screen video ads like how iAds does it. Or they even want to do something even more fancy (remember the dick bar? Imagine if there was no third party Twitter apps when they launched it). Without complete control, it's hard.

In a way, they are at stage 2 of their evolution, stage 1 was iterating on their core product, now they need to iterate on their business model.

PS: I'm the developer for SimplyTweet. I'm biased, but I can imagine where they might be coming from, even though I'm not happy about it.

[nwh]

They haven't updated their Mac client since 2011. It truly seems that their website is the only one worth monetizing.