Apps that use third-party Twitter to advertise have seen their businesses go up in flames
Twitterrific, a third-party Twitter application developer is appealing to customers for refunds after it was removed from the market.
A sudden change to Twitter’s policy means that third-party Twitter clients are now banned. Consequently, Twitterrific and other popular apps – such as Tweetbot, Echofon and Talon – have effectively been rendered useless overnight.
“We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer,” reads a post on Twitterrific developer Iconfactory’s blog.
Cancelled Subscriptions
Twitterrific has been removed from both the iOS and Mac App Stores. All ongoing subscriptions will automatically be cancelled. The developer asks customers to not request full refunds on any outstanding Apple subscriptions, out of fear that they might tip the business off.
“Finally, if you were subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple,” the blog post reads.
“The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets – not Twitter’s and not Apple’s. To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours.”
Twitter ban
Third-party Twitter apps started to have problems last week. Many of the apps were suddenly unable to function. It was initially thought that it was a problem with Twitter’s API. This is despite Twitter having laid off many developers over the past months.
However, it became clear that the policy was changed unannounced to ban any third-party Twitter clients. Users were forced to choose between using the official Twitter website/apps or leaving the service.
Newly reworded Twitter developer agreement now says developers must not “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to Twitter applications”, reversing a 16-year policy of allowing third-party clients.
Twitter’s sudden decision to pull the plug on third-party apps has angered many users.
Twitter did not make any public comments on its changes to the developer agreement. There is also no Twitter communications department that can be contacted for comment.
