What do you think about Twitter API becoming paid? Any alternatives
Richard Gao
24 replies
As you all know, Twitter API is becoming paid soon, and the prices are quite hefty too.
For those of you that built products heavily relying on it, what are your plans?
Replies
Chris Messina@chrismessina
Mammoth 2
Time to let Twitter go. There was a time for centralized social media — so we could learn what the habits and patterns are. A more robust, sustainable model is to move to the web model — to build the social web... finally!
Mastodon supports ActivityPub, and open standard. Bluesky has its own platform. Damus supports Nostr.
Let Elon run the thing into the ground — the courageous and righteous move is to move on.
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@chrismessina Unfortunately, there's still a lot of potential customers and partnerships on twitter. So I can see the paid Twitter API raking in tons of revenue.
People will always follow the money, and this doesn't affect the average user, so it won't be something that causes the site to lose users.
huntFilter
I use quite a bit of tools that work with the Twitter API, so hope they make the pricing a bit fairer depending on usage. Wish there was a free tier too for the hackers/play-around types who just want to mess around with it but won't be having much traffic.
Seems like it should have happened a long time ago. For those who run profitable saas built on it, should be no issue.
I do wish they had a free tier even if limited. But the reality is that most things can be tested in a sandbox anyway. Also, by coming out strong they will have a more clear look at how it affects the platform over all and can always roll out a free tier later anyway.
Have seen griping and complaining from people who wouldn’t be happy one way or another.
I think by doing this they will reduce a lot of the extra noise and bots that plague the platform.
Good news from Elon. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/sta...
Full disclosure:
1. I am not affected by the change in any meaningful way
2. I don’t currently even build apps let alone, use Twitter’s API
3. I have no authority, qualification, or (come to think of it) real right or reason to add my 2c
However: he could have been less of a twatwaffle about it
It makes sense. Given the data flow, the intensity of the usage, and the convenience, there should be some sort of subscription fee, particularly at the enterprise level. Google does that too, for example, with Google Maps.
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Build your own API (e.g. with askui)
@jonas_menes Is it possible for this to have the same functionality as the twitter API?
I don't understand how people can keep or create a business model around a private API. They own your business, not you. Space Karen can just have a bad day, and shut the API for good. No matter how much you pay/time spend on it.
If you stay or work with Twitter right now, that's gambling.
@josue_gutierrez Been thinking something similar with OpenAI's GPT-3 API
And my own product, evoke-app.com, is an API that others will build their products on top of
Chat Breezes 1.0
social media management tool will rise their price accordingly. sigh
I think one of the alternatives would be to create a Chrome extension and scrape the data as and when the user surfs on Twitter. Have seen some companies do it for LinkedIn. Make the user download the chrome extension (which might be challenging) and then save the data whenever the user opens that (or those) particular platforms.
We rely quite heavily on Twitter, so right now we're just patiently waiting to see what the pricing will be.
huntFilter
@martin_balle Brainy seems pretty cool. Almost like a Notion meets Threads app. Hope the Twitter pricing doesn't impact y'all too much, seems like y'all have some fun integrations with it.
@gabe thanks Gabe! Means a lot ✌️ But ye, we're trying to eliminate the knowledge silos that comes with individual browsing, by making it super easy for people to import and share all their cool discoveries from their social channels, tools and general browsing, without constantly disturbing one another on Teams or Slack. Twitter being one of those integrations.
Would love for you try out Brainy, if you're up for it? 😊 Any feedback is welcome! 👋
huntFilter
@martin_balle down to try! Let me go sign up <3
If you only need data (READ) you can develop your own scrapper, otherwise you have to pay.