Rate limits will most certainly hurt Twitter growth. Its strength is the viral way third party apps promote it. In a sense, this move is like biting the hand that feeds you. But unless the third parties can quantify their positive affect on growth, the gravy train may soon end some of our favorite twitter tools. @misterkevin
Christopher
· 10 months ago
I think it makes sense. Understand, every developer that is using the twitter API is doing it with $0 costs incurred from the company. That should be appreciated.
Having said that, I'm hoping that this is part of their process in evaluating what portions of their business can be monetized. If a developer needs their application to have a higher ceiling, I don't think it's asking much for them to pay for it.
Daniel
· 10 months ago
I think rate limiting makes sense and I'd gladly pay to open up the appropriate rate band for my applications. I'd much rather they adopt that as a business model than inject status ads.
Cody Schilke
· 10 months ago
I've written several Twitter bots, a Twitter daemon, and a search app (http://www.twitvoyeur.com). Placing the 20,000/hr API limit is not, in my opinion, unreasonable. This will require that future applications be designed around this limit, which could spawn a better breed of applications that can do more with less. I am, however, disappointed that Twitter is placing this limit on their API's at this point in the game. Many existing applications could be doomed to failure by design and all that effort wasted. I am hoping we don't see many more evasive API changes because constant changes will eventually thwart software develop efforts and innovation.
Cody Schilke @cody_schilke
Rhys
· 10 months ago
20,000 ph for free is pretty reasonable. Twitter should create the facility for premium paid accounts / whitelist for those that need to go over.
Daniel
· 10 months ago
I'm confused; for clients like tweetdeck/twhirl, don't they all use the user's credentials to manage tweets so that the referring IP is not linked to the application itself, and does this mean that all referring requests (from a recognized application rather than IP) are counted in the whitelist limit? I was under the impression your IP or application username was treated as the sole point of contact. Then again tweetdeck may very well use its own credentials on behalf of its users for much of its functionality.
Dharmesh Shah
· 10 months ago
As the developer of one of the most popular twitter "non-client" apps out there, http://twitter.grader.com, here are my thoughts:
1. It's not surprising that there's some rate limit now. This is reasonable. I'd actually prefer that twitter tell me what the limit is so i can design features around it.
2. I'd really love it if they simultaneously provided a way to pay to increase the rate limit.
3. Several of the common capabilities that apps need to build right now (like doing something when a user gets followed) is hard and requires third-party services (like gnip). This is sub-optimal. Twitter need some sort of "subscribe" api so we can get notified of changes that we care about, instead of having to poll the system every time.
These are all solvable and I honestly think Alex and the other members of the API team have been great to work with and very, very supportive.
David Yack
· 10 months ago
Adding a few more key API calls and some return data to current ones would reduce a lot of the calls that are made today by applications.
Oren Michels
· 10 months ago
The 20,000 per hour limit is quite reasonable and in line with what we see at large-volume APIs we manage at Mashery.
The key is not the 20k/hour limit, it is how easily and quickly you can get an exception to that limit for larger/more successful apps. And, of course, how quickly and easily someone who wants to use the API can get on that "whitelist'.
It would also be nice if calls over the limit receive a meaningful error message and if developers could easily find out when they are approaching the limit, so being cut off won't come as a surprise and lead to a wild goose chase for a "bug" that is actually just an overlimit situation.
Oren Michels CEO Mashery
chris
· 10 months ago
@christopher sure, twitter incurs the cost of the api requests, but they also benefit greatly from the viral nature of the apps themselves. Twitter wouldn't be what it is today without its developer community.
Darren
· 10 months ago
let me put this in context for those saying this is fine and apps should be designed around it.
Say your app deals with 10,000 people, each of em update twice in the same hour or heavens above more than 2 times your app will grind to a halt.
people seem to forget that twitter is at such a scale now that some of these apps deal with large amounts of data and have to scale quick.
The ways around this are to get users to hand over their account details but for apps that use public updates then there really is only gnip's fulldata service when its released.
what isn't clear is if a site that hits the api more than 20k in an hour but using different accounts will be blocked.
Darren
· 10 months ago
@swizec that won't work due to crossdomain security blocks
James Shiner
· 10 months ago
This better be the start of a revenue model. Otherwise I don't know how apps with over 20,000 requests per hour are going to survive. It's bad enough I get stopped at 100 requests per hour but to have my entire app have to wait for a reset, that's going to be annoying.
Rayanne Langdon
· 10 months ago
This is pretty big news, but it looks like people are taking it okay so far. I'm part of the team at FreshBooks.com and our API is open. Though I have no development background, I'm no stranger to requests to increase API limits during testing periods. So, I'm aware that 20,000 requests isn't always going to be enough.
Mayhaps this will be part of Twitter's unknown business model, though?! Hmm.
Eric Berlin
· 10 months ago
Wonder if this is first step to charging twitter apps that wan't more than 20,000 requests / hour ?
Eric Marcoullier
· 10 months ago
For anyone seeking public twitter data, then Gnip can help tremendously by sending notifications when there is new data to be grabbed. This keeps you from wasting polls on endpoints that have not changed.
We've got some major improvements coming out in the next couple of weeks, as well, but we're already in a position to help out a lot of application developers as is.
This is leading up to one of Twitter's monetisation efforts. They will easily be able to charge people a relativly small amount for extra usage and make a killing from some of the larger sites using the API.
Tony Steward
· 10 months ago
If Twitter's own web app didn't require me to constantly refresh it, like what Facebook, Friendfeed, Seesmic and others have already figured out - then maybe this wouldn't be a big deal. But since they haven't, and their actual tool (not service) doesn't support a live service - this will seriously limit the value people find in Twitter.
Basically, the short of is that even if in the "New Economy" the incremental cost of copies or bandwidth or whatever for 'bits over atoms' approaches zero... it just AIN'T zero. And in some cases, apps may disappear or break if their data sources either disappear or lock them out. (Unless maybe they can afford to pay for the feed.)
Anyone whose ever run a service that's had some kind of fixed pricing or free data feed eventually runs into this for outlying use. In some cases, (such as the plain ole' phone company being engineered for peak demand on Mother's Day, holidays, etc.), the answer is to just factor it all into overhead and so on. In others, there's tiered pricing; as is found with most hosting plans. So whether it was Prodigy and AOL going to flat rate pricing in the early 90s, then having to put limits on heavy emailers or today's API services, there are simply certain suckers slurping from their straws too deeply at some digital troughs. (Sorry, I don't have time right now for a better metaphor.)
The bottom line is this is potentially at least one aspect of a business model for Twitter. IF the value of an external service using a feed is enough that they can generate enough revenue to help pay for some huge use of feed, then they keep going. If not, then not.
I think we're going to see more of this soon with anything that's successful.
Scott
Kent Brewster
· 10 months ago
@darren, @swizac : nothing-but-net JavaScript apps work just fine with Twitter. You need to request JSON output, specify a callback, and make sure you've got a function ready to deal with the API return. See Twitterati:
this is one of the reasons i thought when twiturly.com was put up for sale last month. rightfuly many interested parties raised this question. unless there is some written contract it is dangerous for thrid party tools to rely on twitter api.
in fact we send press release updates through twitter (twitter account prnews). our volumes are like 20 or 30 updates per hour. we are little concerned that they would limit this too or ask us to pay some time in future when we start using twitter more aggresively.
I think that it will require developers to be more creative with how they build apps. Rather then just querying twitter all the time just any bit of info. Also I think it will require twitter to rethink aspects of their own api.
William
· 10 months ago
The Elephant in the room
If you are an Open Source Developer or Content creator (If you are a member of either service you are a content creator) you should not use Facebook or Twitter.
By using Facebook or Twitter you are essentially raising the value of their companies and applications. Both Facebook and Twitter are closed source content silos that do not allow you to control the content that you create. Neither Facebook or Twitter put the content creator/members at the top of their pyramids when thinking about revenue models. Each of these companies puts their Companies first above the members and communities that have given them value and money.
If you are a developer you may be able to make some money by creating applications for Facebook or Twitter ; but I do not believe that Facebook or Twitter will ever allow your application to eat into their user base or their revenue. Because they are both closed source companies that have the ability to literally cut you off by changing the code/api or by using their proprietary knowledge to build an application that you can not possibly compete with. As a coder understand that when you build and extend Facebook or Twitters propitiatory platforms that you undermine the longevity of the Open Internet.
Content owners and Developers do not help these closed source companies (Twitter and Facebook) in their goal of creating another closed source content trap that will extract hundreds of Millions on dollars from their member and developer communities and give nothing back in return.
George Maicovschi
· 10 months ago
You should keep in mind that POST requests aren't actually counted towards the limit. So posting a message or following another fellow twitterer does NOT count towards the 20k limit.
Scott Germaise
· 10 months ago
@William: You said, "By using Facebook or Twitter you are essentially raising the value of their companies and applications."
Welllll... sure. But c'mon now. That's been true of every BBS system since the 80s. (That's 1980s.) And it was true for CompuServe when people paid several $$$ PER HOUR just to use a Special Interest Group. (SIG) And some forum moderators today get nothing other then the joy of doing the job whereas the forum owner gets any ad revenue. (To a limit. There's backlash to this as well as exceptions. About.com Guides, for exampole, share in revenue.)
Those who provide the venue not only have costs, but have the right to earn something beyond. Personally, I've no problem with Twitter, FB, whomever, making money. I am interesting in watching the means by which they do it and how they control costs for APIs, etc.
Scott
Scott Germaise
· 10 months ago
@Chris. You said, "API’s are cheap, request-wise: simple text sent usually over a single request."
Actually, they might not be. Yes, we all know a ping here or there is nothing. Even hundreds of thousands. But if you've ever been involved with a truly high volume system, there's hard and very real capital costs for infrastructure, bandwidth does add up, etc. And if you've got some kind of indexing going on you've got serious thrashing on servers. That's just the capital costs. Next you need a higher end, (meaning more expensive), data architect and folks to run Ops. And now comes some inappropriate use/abuse. So you've got a product manager or bizdev person for that. (They usually like to get paid as well; even if they are also betting on the magic jelly beans, a.k.a. stock options.)
Having gone through this process myself, I'm guessing current limits are probably just stuff they slapped together while they try to work out an accounting system whereby they could even form customer relationships and bill for usage tiers at all. In the meantime, they just have to cut out pure abuse. As to other apps' use of the feed spreading the Twitter meme, this might not be entirely true. That's just pure cost in an environment where there's practically zero revenue stream at all. I mean, they're not even running ads on their search results page after paying 15MM for Summize. And you're only going to make so much by selling the "insight data" on what people are talking about.
Scott
BCai
· 10 months ago
I'm wondering is this 20000 limit per IP/authenticated user combination? or just per IP? if it's the former case, then most twitter apps will be fine. If it's the latter one, we'll see a wave of out-of-business-apps.
Dave
· 9 months ago
Is twitter API free?
Griffin Gore
· 9 months ago
I think twitter should remove API limits alltogether and maybe look in to buying more servers to store the extra ammount of server use... I personally get very annoyed when I use up all my API on a single application...
iInvoicing
· 7 months ago
The iInvoicing system is an affordable and powerful invoice system
lbr33
· 6 months ago
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All Comments
http://eric.polerecky.com/archives/twitters-loo...
Having said that, I'm hoping that this is part of their process in evaluating what portions of their business can be monetized. If a developer needs their application to have a higher ceiling, I don't think it's asking much for them to pay for it.
Cody Schilke
@cody_schilke
1. It's not surprising that there's some rate limit now. This is reasonable. I'd actually prefer that twitter tell me what the limit is so i can design features around it.
2. I'd really love it if they simultaneously provided a way to pay to increase the rate limit.
3. Several of the common capabilities that apps need to build right now (like doing something when a user gets followed) is hard and requires third-party services (like gnip). This is sub-optimal. Twitter need some sort of "subscribe" api so we can get notified of changes that we care about, instead of having to poll the system every time.
These are all solvable and I honestly think Alex and the other members of the API team have been great to work with and very, very supportive.
The key is not the 20k/hour limit, it is how easily and quickly you can get an exception to that limit for larger/more successful apps. And, of course, how quickly and easily someone who wants to use the API can get on that "whitelist'.
It would also be nice if calls over the limit receive a meaningful error message and if developers could easily find out when they are approaching the limit, so being cut off won't come as a surprise and lead to a wild goose chase for a "bug" that is actually just an overlimit situation.
Oren Michels
CEO
Mashery
Say your app deals with 10,000 people, each of em update twice in the same hour or heavens above more than 2 times your app will grind to a halt.
people seem to forget that twitter is at such a scale now that some of these apps deal with large amounts of data and have to scale quick.
The ways around this are to get users to hand over their account details but for apps that use public updates then there really is only gnip's fulldata service when its released.
what isn't clear is if a site that hits the api more than 20k in an hour but using different accounts will be blocked.
Mayhaps this will be part of Twitter's unknown business model, though?! Hmm.
We've got some major improvements coming out in the next couple of weeks, as well, but we're already in a position to help out a lot of application developers as is.
Eric Marcoullier
CEO
Gnip (www.gnipcentral.com)
Basically, the short of is that even if in the "New Economy" the incremental cost of copies or bandwidth or whatever for 'bits over atoms' approaches zero... it just AIN'T zero. And in some cases, apps may disappear or break if their data sources either disappear or lock them out. (Unless maybe they can afford to pay for the feed.)
Anyone whose ever run a service that's had some kind of fixed pricing or free data feed eventually runs into this for outlying use. In some cases, (such as the plain ole' phone company being engineered for peak demand on Mother's Day, holidays, etc.), the answer is to just factor it all into overhead and so on. In others, there's tiered pricing; as is found with most hosting plans. So whether it was Prodigy and AOL going to flat rate pricing in the early 90s, then having to put limits on heavy emailers or today's API services, there are simply certain suckers slurping from their straws too deeply at some digital troughs. (Sorry, I don't have time right now for a better metaphor.)
The bottom line is this is potentially at least one aspect of a business model for Twitter. IF the value of an external service using a feed is enough that they can generate enough revenue to help pay for some huge use of feed, then they keep going. If not, then not.
I think we're going to see more of this soon with anything that's successful.
Scott
http://kentbrewster.com/twitterati
... for one example.
in fact we send press release updates through twitter (twitter account prnews). our volumes are like 20 or 30 updates per hour. we are little concerned that they would limit this too or ask us to pay some time in future when we start using twitter more aggresively.
Kamalnath,
Webmaster,
PressReleasePoint.com
If you are an Open Source Developer or Content creator (If you are a member of either service you are a content creator) you should not use Facebook or Twitter.
By using Facebook or Twitter you are essentially raising the value of their companies and applications. Both Facebook and Twitter are closed source content silos that do not allow you to control the content that you create. Neither Facebook or Twitter put the content creator/members at the top of their pyramids when thinking about revenue models. Each of these companies puts their Companies first above the members and communities that have given them value and money.
If you are a developer you may be able to make some money by creating applications for Facebook or Twitter ; but I do not believe that Facebook or Twitter will ever allow your application to eat into their user base or their revenue. Because they are both closed source companies that have the ability to literally cut you off by changing the code/api or by using their proprietary knowledge to build an application that you can not possibly compete with. As a coder understand that when you build and extend Facebook or Twitters propitiatory platforms that you undermine the longevity of the Open Internet.
Content owners and Developers do not help these closed source companies (Twitter and Facebook) in their goal of creating another closed source content trap that will extract hundreds of Millions on dollars from their member and developer communities and give nothing back in return.
Welllll... sure. But c'mon now. That's been true of every BBS system since the 80s. (That's 1980s.) And it was true for CompuServe when people paid several $$$ PER HOUR just to use a Special Interest Group. (SIG) And some forum moderators today get nothing other then the joy of doing the job whereas the forum owner gets any ad revenue. (To a limit. There's backlash to this as well as exceptions. About.com Guides, for exampole, share in revenue.)
Those who provide the venue not only have costs, but have the right to earn something beyond. Personally, I've no problem with Twitter, FB, whomever, making money. I am interesting in watching the means by which they do it and how they control costs for APIs, etc.
Scott
Actually, they might not be. Yes, we all know a ping here or there is nothing. Even hundreds of thousands. But if you've ever been involved with a truly high volume system, there's hard and very real capital costs for infrastructure, bandwidth does add up, etc. And if you've got some kind of indexing going on you've got serious thrashing on servers. That's just the capital costs. Next you need a higher end, (meaning more expensive), data architect and folks to run Ops. And now comes some inappropriate use/abuse. So you've got a product manager or bizdev person for that. (They usually like to get paid as well; even if they are also betting on the magic jelly beans, a.k.a. stock options.)
Having gone through this process myself, I'm guessing current limits are probably just stuff they slapped together while they try to work out an accounting system whereby they could even form customer relationships and bill for usage tiers at all. In the meantime, they just have to cut out pure abuse. As to other apps' use of the feed spreading the Twitter meme, this might not be entirely true. That's just pure cost in an environment where there's practically zero revenue stream at all. I mean, they're not even running ads on their search results page after paying 15MM for Summize. And you're only going to make so much by selling the "insight data" on what people are talking about.
Scott
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