Not content with banning native third-party apps, Twitter has continued to cripple their API and move to paid plans for very basic access. I was committed to support Twitter cross-posting as long as possible because there are still Micro.blog customers who want to keep a foot in the Twitter world. But we knew it couldn’t last forever.
July 15th will be our last day to support cross-posting blog posts to Twitter. Even though Twitter has been effectively dead to me since I stopped tweeting in 2012, I’m a little sad to finally have to cut the platform off.
I picked July 15th to give people a couple months to wind down their use of Twitter. We now have to pay Twitter for API access, and that is the longest I can justify doing so.
It’s all another reminder that centralized platforms with closed APIs can’t last. While it’s easy to blame Elon Musk, the writing has been on the wall for a decade.
For more of the Twitter history that brought us to this point, see the chapter in my book called Leaving Twitter. Newly updated for Elon.
So, what’s next?
- Updating the Micro.blog web site to remove mention of Twitter. Luckily, we can now mention Bluesky instead! (When one door closes, another opens.)
- Emailing all Micro.blog customers who currently have Twitter cross-posting enabled, letting them know that the feature will go away on July 15th.
- Hiding the Twitter cross-posting option for new Micro.blog users.
- Later, shutting off the feature and removing all the Twitter code. At least we can do a little code cleanup because of this.
End of an era. Seeya on the open web.
Pratik Glad you’ve specified a date. That’s plenty of time for any holdouts. People are still free to continue using it separately but glad Micro.blog has cut off ties.
Numeric Citizen very well thought out approach. Really time to say goodbye, indeed. That being said, I’m really impressed by how fast you are adopting Bluesky… there’s seem to be a lot of moving parts over there…
Numeric Citizen time to remove the Twitter Card plugin I guess!
Lukas Rosenstock Okay, thanks for the heads-up, I'll probably use it until July 15th and set up cross-posting via Zapier instead after that date (unless Twitter is dead to me by then, too).
💬 John Philpin not sure i fully understand NOSTR yet - but any thoughts about adding it to the cross posting world?
Manton Reece @JohnPhilpin Nostr doesn’t really fit cleanly into how our other cross-posting services work. For now just keeping an eye on it.
Jon Mitchell @manton THIS IS SO WILD WOW
💬 John Philpin 
Stephane just disabled cross-posting there. Do not hesitate advance the date and stop paying these clowns if possible! 😇 👍
Jason McFadden I saw that WordPress is also shutting down Twitter cross-posting. And promoting Tumblr instead, of course.
Numeric Citizen @jasonmcfadden Tumblr?? Is this still a thing? (Just kidding). Of course they are promoting Tumblr. Did they add ActivityPub to Tumblr, yet?
Jason McFadden @numericcitizen I’m not sure the status on that.
Brad Enslen Thank you for paying to keep the Twitter API going until July 15th. That was very thoughtful of you. I'm really not sure what to do in the future as even while Twitter is dying it still generates more traffic from cross posting than any other network.
Manton Reece @bradenslen Thanks, I'm glad you'll be able to use it. I think Buffer is going to continue supporting Twitter, so that's an option to look into.
Dave 
Khürt Williams , I also read that a "discoverability of your micro.blog website post just got harder" or "automatic cross-posting to other social networks including Medium, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Flickr ONLY."
Manton Reece @khurtwilliams Can you explain more what you mean? Discoverability is harder because it can't be automatically linked from Twitter? I wish we could keep the Twitter integration. Just not sustainable given Twitter's direction.
Khürt Williams