In what seems like a direct attack on Facebook and apps that unofficially emulate Twitter, Twitter has began limiting the use of its API ‘follow graph’.
Instagram, the 80 million strong photo editing and sharing app which is owned by Facebook has just had an update and noticeable by it’s absence is the ‘Find your friends on twitter’ option which used to allow you to follow your twitter contacts on Instagram.
Other apps to be effected include Tweetbot, Ubersocial & Hootsuite. Even LinkedIn the successful professional networking website has had it’s Twitter feed cut, meaning you can no longer display your tweets on your profile page.
It seems though that smaller, less threatening apps, are still being allowed to use the API to its full extent.
Why are twitter doing this
It is thought hat the main reason Twitter are doing this is they believe that now they are in a pretty powerful position their API and ‘Follow Graph’ is pretty important to companies that rely on it for free PR and marketing, and there are opportunities to monetise this, other rumours are that they intend to follow Googles AdWords advertising model, some see this as a bad move.
Some industry insiders believe that a tiered pricing system will be introduced to some users, namely big businesses and people with a large amount of follower.
