Overnight, users on Twitter started reporting that the older and much better version of TweetDeck has returned, along with the free API access that enabled third-party Twitter clients. TweetDeck was shut down last week when Twitter abruptly put up a rate-restricting paywall, killing the outdated APIs that allowed the old version of the feature to function, while banning third-party apps in January.
A update this morning from Harpy developer Roberto Doering says they switched to the “old v1 API” to get it working again, but they also noted “this doesn’t mean harpy will be serviced again as Twitter will most likely lose access to their legacy will shut down api (again) soon and third party apps are still against their TOS.
A scan of the official Twitter accounts, as well as those of Elon Musk and new CEO Linda Yaccarino left no one saying anything about the return of the old TweetDeck – the most recent tweet from the Twitter support account is from a few days ago announcing the launch of the new TweetDeck.
After that, Twitter forced its “new, improved” TweetDeck, which has been in preview for over two years, on the world. It announced via the Twitter support account that the feature would go behind the Twitter Verified paywall for Twitter Blue subscribers and those the company deems worthy of a free blue check.
Twitter claimed its decision to limit the number of tweets its users could see per day was a necessary and temporary one, caused by companies deleting its site to feed AI models.
The company is also facing its most formidable copycat with the launch of Instagram’s Threads app, which Meta rushed out ahead of schedule this week in a bid to capitalize on Twitter at its most vulnerable, quickly registering more than 70 million accounts in less than two days. However, TweetDeck could be a feature that Threads won’t copy, like Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told Alex Heath that “politics and hard news will inevitably show up on Threads — they have on Instagram to some degree — but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.”
Update July 8, 2023, 12:50 PM ET: Updated to reflect that some third-party apps may now work as well.
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