January 17, 2023
Users of third-party Twitter apps such as Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Echofon, and others have expressed concern about the inability to log in and access Twitter feeds, and Twitter is silent about it.
On Thursday, January 12, around 11 p.m. ET, the third-party Twitter clients stopped working. Users who attempted to access the apps began receiving error messages about authentication issues.
Tweets from the official accounts of the Tweetbot and Twitterrific clients confirmed their communication issues on Thursday night. Echofon’s Twitter account announced shortly after 8:30 a.m. Friday that it was working to resolve its issues.
While developers and users expected Twitter to communicate with them in some way, the company and its new owner Elon Musk have remained silent on the issue.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that Twitter no longer has a communications or public relations department for the press or other stakeholders, as Musk fired the entire department during the first round of Twitter layoffs.
Others, on the other hand, believe it is due to a sudden policy change. Because of Twitter’s patchy experience with third-party clients and the company’s recent history of making changes without warning that had seemingly unanticipated consequences, this is not an API bug.
However, not all third-party clients appear to be inoperable. Third-party apps that process Twitter data for users to determine engagement, as well as Tweetdeck, a Twitter-owned alternative client, appeared to be functional.
The sources for this piece include an article in TechCrunch.
