Latest Twitter Problem: Its API Has Been Down And No Info Has Been Provided
Last night, I saw a bunch of folks complaining that the various apps through which they accessed Twitter, were no longer working. People using Tweetbot, Twitteriffic, Tweeten, and others all noted that they were blocked from actually using those services to read Twitter. It quickly became clear that Twitter's API was completely down. There was plenty of speculation that (in a repeat of an earlier era when Twitter greatly limited its API access out of a fear of losing control of the service to third party developers) that Elon Musk was doing this on purpose to try to stop third party app developers from offering ad-free access to Twitter. However, that still seems like pretty broad speculation.
Jack Dorsey, in the past, admitted that the decision a decade ago to cut off their API was one of the biggest mistakes the company made, and in recent years had tried to rectify that with a better developer program and more open API. There were some concerns last month when Elon Musk shut down the Twitter Toolbox program somewhat abruptly, which was a useful tool for many third party app developers.
So while I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is a deliberate move by Musk to cut off those services, the lack of communication is perhaps even worse. App developers say they've had no communications from the company and Musk (so far, as I write this) has said nothing publicly.
None of that is good if you're trying to cultivate a strong community with the developers who make your service better and more usable. And, given how Twitter has burned developers in the past, it seems particularly worrisome. If it's intentional by Musk, that's obviously problematic. But if it's not intentional, and it's just that something broke... and no one bothered to communicate with the various organizations that use the API, well, that might even be worse?
Of course, I will note that the Mastodon API remains available for all to use (and just in the past few weeks some really, really cool new services have been developed for it that go above and beyond some of the ones I've mentioned in the past). Perhaps this kind of scenario will cause more of them to explore providing new tools, apps, and services for that platform as well.