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.
