Some third-party Twitter apps and clients like Tweetbot and Twitterific seem to be experiencing an outage currently, and the cause is still unclear. Developers reportedly have not received any communication yet from Twitter about whether these issues are caused by a bug or something else, according to a Mastodon post from one of Tweetbot’s creators, Paul Haddad.
“I’m hoping that whatever is going on at Twitter is just some automated spam protection bot that is incorrectly suspending proper apps, or something similar,” Haddad posted. “Unfortunately I don’t have many contacts at Twitter anymore so doubt I’ll get any kind of definitive answer soon.”
There has been speculation from the users of the social media platform and some news outlets that this is a move from the company to shut down third-party clients altogether. Nevertheless, the outage may not be universal. Some apps, such as Albatross and Fenix 2, appear to be working so far, but there have been reports from some users about problems with Fenix. The first-party Twitter app is also still functional.
“Tweetbot and other clients are experiencing problems logging in to Twitter. We’ve reached out to Twitter for more details, but haven’t heard back,” said Tweetbot by Tapbots. “We’re hoping this is just a temporary glitch and will let you know more as soon as we know more.”
Also, Twitterific tweeted, “We’re aware that Twitterrific is having problems communicating with Twitter. We don’t yet know what the root cause is, but we’re trying to find out. Please stay tuned and apologies.”
Third-party apps depend on the API of Twitter to get data from the service, a point that has been contentious in the past as the company went through a period where it neglected tools for external developers. That seemed to be turning around prior to Elon Musk buying the company, though where he stands on alternative Twitter apps is not vivid; he does not appear to have said much about them, either positive or negative.
Furthermore, it is difficult to tell whether the third-party client outage is because of the API. As of press time, there haven’t been any tweets about the apparent glitches, either from Twitter’s official account, the account of Twitter Support, or Elon Musk. Also, Twitter does not have a communications department that could directly be asked about the issue. The only way is to keep an eye out for any developments.
Here are what some users say about the issue:
“Uh oh. @tweetbot is unable to request any tokens from @Twitter. Either something’s down or something been done. Could this be the end? Of both for me if it is,” said @rajdeut on Twitter.
@tgfletch also tweeted, “API seems to be down in third party apps like Tweetbot. Assuming the failure is intentional, that might finally be the reason to pull the plug.”
