John Paul M. Joaquin Tech 01.13.2023 07:Jan AM EST

Twitter’s Third-Party Apps Appear To Be Broken, Facing Issues, Users Say

Twitter's API may be out for the count for some in the immediate future.

Many of the microblogging platform's third-party apps have recently announced that their users are experiencing problems logging in to the website, though other third-party apps are not reporting any outages on their end.

Twitter has yet to address the situation nor provided a solution to third-party app developers to get their apps running again.

Twitter Third-Party App Outage Details

People using third-party apps were experiencing quite a handful of issues on Jan. 13. According to Tech Crunch, many users of Tweetbot, Echofon, and Twitterific are experiencing login issues and problems accessing Twitter feeds.

Although the developers of these third-party apps are aware of the situation based on the tweets they posted, they have yet to receive any communication from Twitter on what is causing the outage.

Fortunately, they are trying to figure out what exactly happened without Twitter's input, per The Verge.

However, there is a reason not to expect any form of communication from Twitter regarding what's happening to its API. Tweetbot co-creator Paul Haddad's posted on his Mastodon account that while he's hoping that whatever's going on at Twitter is just some "automated spam protection bot" that incorrectly suspended third-party apps, he doesn't have many contacts at Twitter anymore.

This lack of contacts on Haddad's side is due to the layoffs Musk executed as Twitter's CEO during the first few months after he took over the company.

You may remember that the members of Twitter's communications team have either been laid off or resigned completely, leaving no one for companies, developers, and even users to talk to regarding the platform's issues.

Is Twitter Killing Off Third-Party Apps?

There is a possibility that Twitter could be terminating its third-party clients as they do not bring any ad revenue, according to 9to5Google. And with Elon Musk not paying any rent to the office space Twitter leases to create positive cash flow for the company, this theory may be likely.

There are some pieces of evidence to back up this claim. The Information reported that Twitter is greenlighting "desperate measures" to keep ad buyers on board, with many Twitter users taking note of the increased number of ads appearing on the platform.

Twitter also made its algorithmic timeline default on iOS, replacing its traditional "Home" and "Latest" tabs with its "For You" and following tabs.

Lastly, third-party apps that use the API but are not full clients seem to operate normally, per Twitter user Tim Carmody. Examples of third-party apps that are still operating without issue are Tweetdelete, Unfollowspy, IFTTT, and Feedland.

Twitter's position regarding third-party apps is still questionable as he has yet to call for a conference with third-party app developers like the former administration did with the canceled revival of Twitter's Chirp Developer Conference previously set for late 2022, per Twitter's past announcement.