Following the removal of prominent app developers such as Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter quietly updated its developer terms today to prohibit all third-party clients.
The “restrictions” section of Twitter’s 5,000-word developer agreement has been updated with a clause prohibiting “using or accessing the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications,” as discovered by Engadget. Twitter stated earlier this week that it was “enforcing long-standing API rules” by denying clients access to its platform, but did not specify which rules were broken. Twitter clients, as Engadget points out, are a part of Twitter history, Twitterific was created before Twitter had its own native iOS app. And, thanks in part to their lack of advertisements, they’ve grown in popularity in recent years.