Will we see the death of Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Echofon soon? Twitter on Friday issued a clear statement to developers that placed a moratorium on third-party apps.
Apps like Foursquare or Instagram are free to integrate Twitter into their services. Twitter is also fine with companies like Klout creating analytics tools. But Twitter's director of platform Ryan Sarver made the company's stance on apps that show and send tweets clear in a note sent to developers.
"Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience," he said. "The answer is no."
Sarver said 90 percent of tweeters use the company's official apps. Which is why, for example Twitter acquired iPhone client Tweetie and started making its own "official" apps last spring. Twitter wants to continue to be the primary provider of access to the service, whether it's on the desktop, a phone, a tablet, or any other device, Sarver said. The goal in this policy is to give users a seamless experience.
"We need to ensure that tweets and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter what they are," Sarver continued. "For example, some developers display 'comment,' 'like,' or other terms with tweets instead of 'follow, favorite, retweet, reply,' - thus changing the core functions of a tweet."
Accordingly, Twitter has updated its terms of service. Last month, Twitter suspended the UberTwitter and twidroyd apps for violating the company's API policies; those issues have since been resolved.