I haven’t used Twitter in four days. 

On January 12th, third party Twitter clients stopped working. This came with no announcement from Twitter, or their leader, on whats going on. From the direction things have been going, and all the internal leaks, its almost impossible to say this wasn’t planned. I feel terrible for developers who have spent their time building these great apps and have just had their business wiped out right from under them. Calling it grotesque would be an understatement.

So I haven’t not been using Twitter by choice. Tweetbot has been my twitter app of choice since it came out in 2011. Everyday for almost 12 years I have used this software, and now it’s seemingly gone with no return in sight. This is something anyone could see coming. Twitter hasn’t been giving third party clients the latest APIs for years now, and with the direction the service has been going since Elon Musk purchased it, it was only a matter of time. Though, I don’t see why updating the third party APIs to include things like Ads, and even increasing the amount developers pay to use them couldn’t be a route they take. I pay for Tweetbot yearly and would have been fine paying a little more each year if it meant I got to keep using the app I loved. Hell, I would pay for Tweetbot and pay Twitter to get rid of the ads too. They blew it here.

However, one of the things I have loved about third party Twitter apps is the lack of the latest APIs. You don’t get ads, which was awesome. But you also don’t get all the terrible new stuff that they do as well. My timeline has always been in chronological order. I don’t want your algorithms. I don’t want your suggested tweets. I want a timeline of the people I follow. You know, what Twitter is.

It’s not just the timeline, though. Tweetbot is such a better app overall than the offical one. It’s fast, slick, great UI, themes, and gesture support. The offical app is a downgrade in every fashion. There was a period when the official client was good. Twitter bought Tweetie in 2010 and made it the offical app and changed the name to ‘Twitter for iPhone’. Twitter before this, did not have an offical app. Being a hardcore Tweetie user, this news was bittersweet. Okay, mostly bitter. It wasn’t longafter Twitter took over the app that the magic started to disappear. This is when I jumped on Tweetbot as soon as I could, and haven’t looked back since.

It sucks losing software you use everyday and love. If I had known the last time I used Tweetbot was going to be the last, I would have taken it all in differently.

Now, not long ago, I started using Mastodon. There are things I like about it, and things I don’t. It does have a ton of potential for a Twitter replacement, especially once Tweetbot creators tapbots put out their new client Ivory. However, the big hold up for me isn’t the software selection, it’s whose using the service. Most, if not all, of the more technical minded people have moved over and are now posting on Mastadon, but a lof of people I enjoy following haven’t. A majority, in fact. I’m sure this will get better over time, but it is my one big concern moving over to something new. Up until the third party app shutdown, I was looking at both services everyday to stay connected.

Twitter apps have been an amazing playground for iOS developers since the App Store launched. Pull to refresh started as a Tweetie feature and now it is everywhere. It really is a sad day for software.