Developers will eventually have to pay to use Twitter’s API. On February 9th, the website will stop supporting free access to both versions 1.1 and 2 of its API, according to a tweet from its Twitter Dev account. Instead, it will introduce a “paid basic tier,” but the pricing has not yet been disclosed by the company. Since Elon Musk became CEO, Twitter has been experimenting with new revenue streams. The most significant change is Twitter Blue, an $8-$11 per month subscription service that allows users to obtain the previously elusive blue checkmark on the platform.
Musk and his advisors reportedly discussed the notion of including paid direct messages and movies behind a paywall, according to a New York Times investigation from last year. Even the short-form video app Vine, which was discontinued in 2016, was apparently a possibility. Musk has been looking at all potential income streams in order to be able to repay the loans he took out when he paid $44 billion for Twitter. According to The Information, in order to complete the transaction, he borrowed $13 billion from a number of banks, but they were unable to sell the loan to investors as intended. The corporation is now required to pay interest alone of $1.5 billion annually.
When third-party clients like Tweetbot abruptly ceased functioning in January, Twitter gave hints that it planned to alter the way developers accessed its APIs. Later, the business acknowledged that it had purposefully blocked their access because of “long-standing API rules,” despite the fact that it had previously deleted the section of its developer policy that forbade developers from building apps that were identical to its main service. The website modified its developer agreement a few days after third-party Twitter clients were taken offline to prohibit access to its “Licensed Materials to establish or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”
“Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets,” the company wrote in a follow-up tweet. “We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us.” While it’s pretty clear that Twitter intends to charge developers to use its API, it didn’t say if it would make exceptions for researchers. Twitter provides specialized access to its API for academic research, and people in academia have been using data from the website for their studies across various fields, including health and politics.
The website promises to share more details about the new “paid basic tier” for its API next week.