Alejandro Arrieche
As promised, Twitter announced yesterday the rollout of a new version of its application programming interface (API) called the v2 for which developers will now have to pay. Here’s what the company has revealed thus far about the new tool.
The announcement was made by the Twitter Dev official account last night. According to the tweet, the price of the basic tier of the API v2 will be $100 per month. Meanwhile, Twitter informed that it will be postponing the shutdown of the free API to 13 February – possibly to give third parties enough time to migrate to the new paid version without experiencing any kind of disruption.
We have been busy with some updates to the Twitter API so you can continue to build and innovate with us.
We’re excited to announce an extension of the current free Twitter API access through February 13. Here’s what we’re shipping then
— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) February 8, 2023
Four tiers of the v2 version have been created for different types of users. Even though some important details have not been provided yet, such as the specific price of each tier, Twitter has at least published some of the technical aspects that differentiate one access level from the other.
The four available tiers thus far were named Essential, Elevated, Elevated+, and Academic Research. The Elevated+ package is not available at the time but prospective users can sign up for a waitlist.
All of the tiers support 1 project per account. Meanwhile, the Essential package supports 1 app per project and the same goes for the Academic Research tier. Meanwhile, the Elevated tier supports up to 3 apps running on a single project.
Those who subscribe to the Essential tier can retrieve up to 500,000 tweets per month while Elevated users can retrieve as many as 2 million. Meanwhile, Academic Researchers can sign up for that tier to retrieve up to 10 million tweets.
In most cases, the Academic Research version of the API offers the most access compared to the other two available tiers.
A Free Version of the API Will Soon Be Rolled Out for Fun Bot Accounts
Users that were approved for a developer account before 15 November have had their accounts migrated to Elevated status and may continue to use the v1.1, premium v1.1, and enterprise endpoints.
The Enterprise API will continue to be available to users that require the highest level of access to the company’s data. The premium v.1.1 version will also no longer be available starting on 13 February and those who relied on that solution to power their third-party apps can now migrate to the Enterprise tier.
Twitter responded to the feedback provided by hundreds of users who were concerned that many fun bot accounts will be automatically shut down once the paid version of the API was rolled out.
In the same thread, the developer-facing account said that the lighter free version of the API will be introduced soon and will support the publication of up to 1,500 tweets per month for a single authenticated user token.
Numbers Suggest that Subscriptions Are Doing Little to Shore Up Twitter’s Battered Finances
It has been a busy week for Twitter as the company is rolling out many changes to the platform. Just yesterday, Blue subscribers were informed that they could now publish longer tweets of as many as 4,000 characters.
Only 280 characters will continue to be displayed per tweet but the platform will now be adding a “Show more” button to the longer ones so users who are interested in reading the entire post can click on and those who aren’t will not be discomforted by huge chunks of texts appearing on their timelines.
The rollout of this new API marks the most relevant change made to this tool since 2012 and opens up a new revenue stream for Twitter. The success of the Blue subscription has not yet been assessed as the company no longer has to provide details of its finances or operating performance after being taken private.
In November last year, the New York Times reported that nearly 140,000 users had subscribed to Twitter Blue to enjoy some of the benefits introduced by Musk after he revamped the subscription package, including the possibility of having their accounts verified instantly.
Meanwhile, a more recent report from The Information indicated that just 290,000 people have signed up for Blue thus far according to a document to which the media outlet had access. This would result in annual revenues of just $38 million (before app store fees) if those figures are true. A drop in the bucket for a firm that generated over $4 billion in revenue before the billionaire took over the reins.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alejandro Arrieche.
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