The future of Intuiface's Twitter Interface Asset is hard to pin down

Last Thursday, out of the blue, Twitter’s official account tweeted that the company would discontinue free access to their API just one week later, on 9-February. All would be forced to use a paid Twitter API access option.

Considering the fickle nature of Elon Musk and his management acolytes, it’s hard to know what will really happen on that date. For example, just a couple of days ago, Musk backtracked and wrote that bots would still be allowed to write tweets for free.

Nevertheless, if free API access is revoked, Intuiface’s out-of-the-box Twitter support will be broken.

Specifically, the Intuiface Twitter Interface Asset (IA) - predicated on free API access - will no longer be able to display tweets. Further, as this interface asset was not constructed for use with paid Twitter accounts, there is no way to adapt it for account authentication. And since Twitter authentication relies on OAuth, it’s not possible (yet) to create an IA using API Explorer.

NOTE: It is absolutely possible to hand-craft a Twitter IA with authentication support. We have customers who have been doing so for years. However, this is a non-trivial exercise as it requires development skills, not just to create the IA itself, but to account for OAuth authentication.

Frankly, we don’t yet know the future of our out-of-the-box Twitter IA. We will monitor the situation and keep you apprised of our understanding and intentions as they develop.

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Thought I would add my two pence into the thread. If the time eventually comes and the Twitter Interface Asset/API is no longer available don’t worry you can always use this RSS.app as the API Explorer supports an XML feed you can practically turn anything into a feed with this third-party tool.

You can create two feeds with the free account you can create an account and sign up here: Sign up

Here is a quick look at how easy it is to create the feed and integrate into your experience.

Kind Regards

Louie

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I’m quite sure no one knows what the heck a pence is, but your recommendation is great! Thanks @Promultis . Definitely worth exploring. I just wonder if rss.app will be affected by the API issue as well. We’ll see!

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@Promultis , Though I definitely like the workaround, I’m pretty sure platforms like this rss.app will also suffer from this decision and unless they have the money to give its users (you, us) free access to Twitter feed while they have to pay to use its API, they are probably going to update their rules / business model as well.
Time will tell.

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As of yesterday, Monday the 13th, Twitter shared that the API update will be delayed “a few more days”: https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1625234161010343941

NOTE: Twitter claims, “There has been an immense amount of enthusiasm for the upcoming changes with Twitter API”. They just mean Elon Musk, right?

Back on 29-March, @TwitterDev tweeted that “over the next 30 days”, the original API access tiers would be “deprecated”, recommending that migration to new tiers should occur sooner rather than later.

Sounds straight forward but, as always, the meaning is cloudy. First, as we’ve learned from earlier Twitter communication, timelines are in flux. The reality of the “next 30 days” could be quite different. Second, technically, “deprecated” does not mean discontinued, it means superceded. In fact, often, a deprecated feature is a feature that can still be used but has been replaced by something better. So will deprecation stop access cold turkey? Hard to say.

HOWEVER, it’s best to assume the Intuiface Twitter Interface Asset will stop working sometime in April. As noted above by @Promultis, there is an RSS workaround - but that third-party service must deal with the new API access tiers like everyone else, so their future is also in flux.

The long-term future of our Interface Asset is uncertain. We’ll monitor the situation and continue to keep you in the loop.

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As of 28-April-2023, Twitter ended free use of their API for reading tweets - and thus, on that date, all existing Intuiface appointments using the Twitter Interface Asset stopped displaying tweets as well.

Current plans are to remove the Interface Asset from Composer as part of its next release.