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Third-Party Twitter app developers suffer financial blow from Musk’s restrictions

'To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours,' said Sean Heber, the founder of Twitterific

In early January, Elon Musk and Twitter decided to shut out third-party applications, quoting that it was “enforcing its long-standing API rules.”

The move has not only impacted the developers’ income but also left them facing the tough decision of refunding thousands of subscribers, via AppleInsider.

Twitterific, which was created before Twitter even had its own native iOS app, was a prominent third-party client that was credited with several ‘firsts’ for the platform, including the first use of the word ‘tweet,’ the first use of a bird icon, the first to show a character counter while typing a tweet, the first to support replies and conversations, and more.

According to a blog post by Sean Heber, the founder of Twitterific, the closure will hurt their business significantly. If “you were [a] subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple,” he wrote. “The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets – not Twitter’s and not Apple’s.”

“To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours,” he added.

Now, Both Twitterific and Tweetbot have updated their apps to include an option for subscribers to decline the refund, as reported by DaringFireball. According to the report, all subscriptions to the apps were cancelled when Apple decided to remove the App Store. However, users who had an ongoing subscription at the time, like an annual subscription, for example, can still update to the latest version of the app and tap an “I Don’t Need a Refund” button to show support to the companies.

The move by Musk has been met with criticism from both developers and users alike, who have accused him of monopolizing the Twitter platform; however, companies are already moving on. Tweetbot developer Tapbots said that as a result of the shutdown, it is now speeding up the development of its Mastodon app, Ivory.

Image credit: IconFactory

Source: AppleInsider

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