Twitter warned us that the World Cup Twitter fever was causing it all sorts of headaches and it’s been passing the stress on to third party apps like Tweetdeck and Seesmic over the past few days. If you’ve been finding that the Twitter API changes have left you app of choice locked out for long periods, here’s what’s been going on behind the scenes…
The current Twitter woes are down to the service slashing the number of API calls apps can make. Every time a programme like Tweetdeck demands asks Twitter for some data it comes out of its hourly allowance of API calls. Back in June, Twitter announced it was cutting the number apps could make from 350 an hour to 175 but yesterday that number dropped to just 75.
If you’re running Tweetdeck with a few columns as well as writing tweets and responding to @replies, you’ll soon shoot through the API allowance, especially if you follow lots of people. We’ve been locked out of Tweetdeck at least once an hour for the past few days. Mobile apps like Twitter’s very own Tweetie and the mobile homepage at m.twitter.com have also had the same issues.
Twitter’s Carolyn Penner told Wired that it’s requests not tweets that are being restricted: “We are not limiting the number of Tweets sent. So, Tweets still go through.” That’s good news but it’s still frustrating to find yourself looking at a locked down timeline and missing updates when Twitter suddenly jumps back to life.
Over on the Tweetdeck blog, it’s reporting that the Twitter API is starting to get back to normal but we’ve still be seeing that pesky “Twitter API limit reached” message pretty regularly.
Let us know: have you found been irritated by Twitter throttling third party apps? And what apps are you current touting to tweet from?
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