New APIs to power customer engagement in Direct Messages
A big history lesson and a big WARNING for anyone who is thinking of building anything with Twitter&#x27;s APIs. Once this company, long ago, encouraged developers to use their APIs to build products and utilities.<p>Developers heeded the call and flocked to the company&#x27;s APIs. They built new clients and innovative solutions to make Twitter truly useful. Twitter grew fast with the developer&#x27;s help and the developer&#x27;s themselves did well. Many raised millions of dollars in VC funding to make vibrant companies around the Twitter ecosystem. Things were going well.<p>Then Twitter became greedy. Twitter decided to destroy the very companies that grew Twitter&#x27;s user base. They changed their TOS monthly outlawing various product categories. They banned clients. They put restrictive quotas on their APIs to starve out companies so they could reap their revenue for themselves. Hundreds of products fell. Millions of developer hours were lost. The Twitter ecosystem shrank and so did Twitter&#x27;s user growth.<p>So if you&#x27;re thinking about building anything with this company then be warned. If anything you&#x27;ve built is remotely popular, then it is only a matter of time before they come to pillage whatever you&#x27;ve built.