Twitter Trying to Rein in Third Party Apps

Twitter has released a bit of news that appears to have angered the developer community. But it's not just app developers that should take pause with the latest news from the people at Twitter. Social media companies might be just as affected depending on what tools they use to run their campaigns.

Twitter is tightening its grip with the latest iteration of its API in order to assert more control over third party apps that connect to the service. The biggest change will be these third party clients will have to submit to stricter guidelines in order to gain access to Twitter. These range from stylistic restrictions (Tweets must look similar across all platforms) to having limits on the number of users that the app can support. For example, a service is allowed to have up to 100,000 users. However, once they pass this threshold they must get permission from Twitter directly in order to continue accessing the API. This doesn't mean they will be given that permission.

So, what does this mean for internet marketers? Well, to put it simply, what are you going to do if the third party client you currently use runs into trouble with Twitter and loses functionality? Many social media marketers have a large number of clients and do all their organizing in a third party app to keep all their Tweeting in order. While no one can know if this will become a legitimate issue, this move from Twitter warrants attention. Twitter is clearly looking to rein in control in order to try to create an efficient way to bring in revenue, which it has had difficulty doing so far.