Twitter API Changes for August 16th

As you may have heard, Twitter has announced API changes for August 16, 2018 that will affect third party Twitter apps. Sadly, these changes will result in the loss of some functionality in many third party Twitter apps. This post explains in detail how Twitter’s upcoming changes will affect Tweetlogix.

Twitter Shutting Down Streaming APIs

Twitter has announced that their streaming APIs will be shutting down beginning on August 16th, 2018. For Tweetlogix, this means that the app will no longer be able to support Wi-Fi Streaming Refresh after that date. You will still be able to use pull-down and auto refresh, but real-time streaming will unfortunately no longer be possible.

Twitter will be gradually shutting down their streaming APIs over a week period from August 16th to August 23rd. During the shutdown period, Tweetlogix should automatically revert back to manual pull-down refresh if it is unable to connect to the Twitter stream. We will release another update shortly after the shutdown to remove settings in Tweetlogix related to Wi-Fi Streaming Refresh.

Unfortunately, Twitter is not offering an alternative API suitable for implementing real-time streaming in client apps. Although Twitter has recently introduced a new Account Activity API providing some access to real-time data, this API does not offer the functionality needed to replace Twitter’s deprecated user streams API for client apps.

As mentioned above, you will  still be able to use Tweetlogix Auto Refresh (Settings > Refresh > Auto Refresh) after August 23rd. This feature enables Tweetlogix to refresh as often as every two minutes while the app is open.

Twitter Changing to new Direct Message API

Twitter has also announced that they will be changing to a new Direct Message API and will be shutting down their legacy Direct Message API endpoints beginning on August 16th, 2018.

Support for Twitter’s new Direct Message API is included in the Tweetlogix 2.15 update, which is available now in the App Store. Please be sure to upgrade to Tweetlogix 2.15 to ensure that direct messages continue to refresh in Tweetlogix.

The changes for Twitter’s new Direct Message API are mostly transparent to users, with two exceptions:

  • Twitter’s new Direct Message API is slower to deliver new direct messages than the legacy API endpoints that it replaces, with delays delivering direct messages of one minute or more.
  • Twitter’s new Direct Message API can only supply direct messages sent or received within the past 30 days. Tweetlogix will continue to cache older direct messages in the app, but if you clear your Tweetlogix cache then only messages within 30 days will be retrieved from Twitter.