Twitter has started a new limited experiment, according to TechCrunch, in which it will promote developers’ third-party safety measures organically on its network. At initially, the test will focus on apps like Prevent Party, Bodyguard, and Moderate, which may help block harassment and other dangerous content on the site.
As part of the pilot, select users will see these services provided with a new popup when they mute or ban another account on Twitter. It offers apps from Twitter Toolbox, a new initiative that promotes third-party Twitter features through an online portal. “The Twitter Toolbox offers new ways to improve your Twitter experience,” the message begins, before listing a variety of services.
Twitter is seeking to encourage third-party solutions on its platform, which rely on word-of-mouth or traditional advertising to recruit new users at the moment. “[Developers] want users,” Twitter’s head of product, Amir Shevat, says TechCrunch. “We want to provide them the relevant users at the right time.”
It comes as Twitter works to repair its turbulent relationship with third-party developers. In the early days of Twitter, the social media network was rather open, allowing third-party developers to construct fully working clients. This mentality had changed by 2012, and by 2018, Twitter has essentially decimated the market for feature-rich third-party clients.
Only two years later, the company began rethinking the tools offered to third-party developers. Version 2 of its API was released in early 2020, and it includes “conversation threading, poll results in Tweets, pinned Tweets on profiles, spam filtering, and a more powerful stream filtering and search query language,” as well as “conversation threading, poll results in Tweets, pinned Tweets on profiles, spam filtering, and a more powerful stream filtering and search query language.” The new API was introduced in early access last year, but there are still certain restrictions for developers, including as a monthly limit of 500,000 or 2 million tweets, depending on their access tier.
The idea, according to Shevat, is to encourage Twitter and third-party developers to collaborate in a mutually beneficial fashion. “I’m seeing Twitter as an ancient Nokia phone right now… It was a fantastic phone. But, as you may recall, Snake was the only app on it “Shevat told TechCrunch about it. “I see Twitter’s future as an iPhone, where developer innovation is the primary source of value.”
