6 ms·

We got hit by a wave of deprecation on Twitter yesterday

17 points by davewiner 14y ago

jeremysmyth 14y ago
Dave, I really like RSS. I signed up to play with early functionality for radio2 when you let folk do that, and I agree with everything you're saying about twitter. Why aren't you trying to replace it with the very decentralized thing you wish for? The various tools you're creating are either clients for the existing social networks, or aggregators/combiners/distributors -- none of which make us (or you, actually) any less reliant on Twitter. The fact that you're as vulnerable to Twitter's whims -- you, who's enmeshed in this world and understands more about it than I'll ever hope to, and has created formats to allow us to work apart from silos -- means I have no chance. Is there something I'm not getting?
- davewiner 14y ago
  Of course we're trying to replace it. My feed is out there for anyone to follow. http://links.scripting.com/rss.xml http://links.scripting.com/rss.xml What else can I do? The press doesn't want to write about this, presumably because I'm not going to pay any money to sponsor their conferences. I just don't have the power to get everyone to provide feeds, if I did, I would.
kaolinite 14y ago
Me too. Was just emailed by a client complaining that their Twitter feed had gone down. I was using the JSON API too but needed to change from http://twitter.com/.. http://twitter.com/... to http://api.twitter.com/1/.. http://api.twitter.com/1/...
awestley 14y ago
Better than a wave of defecation...
benatkin 14y ago
Yesterday I found that twitter wasn't working for my simplified posting interface and example node.js application https://justtweet.herokuapp.com/ https://justtweet.herokuapp.com/ so I set out to fix it. The first thing I did was add logging of the error. When I tried pushing it back to Heroku I found that something else broke, because I didn't specify versions for my dependencies in my package.json and it got newer versions with a slightly different API. When I got it working I had refactored my code and changed the API url to https and to specify the version number as 1.1. Thanks to Dave's work note I found out why: > "All non-versioned API endpoints, such as http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline, will cease functioning." http://worknotes.scripting.com/october2012/101112ByDw/unbreakingOurTwitter http://worknotes.scripting.com/october2012/101112ByDw/unbrea... Mine was api.twitter.com without a version, not twitter.com. https://github.com/resources/justtweet.herokuapp.com/commit/100dda50a34a51455e6cad553e07a28e66723646#commitcomment-1981403 https://github.com/resources/justtweet.herokuapp.com/commit/... I see why they felt the need to break twitter.com to simplify their deployment but I don't see why they thought it made sense to break api.twitter.com urls without a version number.
- abraham 14y ago
  It isn't just deployment. Every version requires extra code paths for developers to maintain.
  - benatkin 14y ago
    I didn't mean to say that it would be effortless. What I'm saying is that having the API on twitter.com can complicate twitter's web app, which should ideally be a separate service from their API. That might be a change worth making, even if it caused problems for some API users. I don't think keeping a non-versioned url at api.twitter.com would complicate things enough to justify turning it off, unless they didn't care about small API users.
leeoniya 14y ago
i could be wrong, but deprecation != removal (which is what this sounds like)
- joekrill 14y ago
  It sounds like they had been previously deprecated. Which implies eventual removal. The guy even says: "I admit I wasn't paying attention to their deprecation".
prodigal_erik 14y ago
Did they completely fail to notice the API was still in use, or just not care? Thou shalt not break working code.
- bonzoesc 14y ago
  The now-deprecated API probably wasn't working for Twitter, so they got rid of it. Developers were warned before this happened, and your code is your responsibility, not Twitter's.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  We're still talking about the folks who just kneecapped the popular third-party Twitter clients, right?
sergiotapia 14y ago
So you're crying foul because something marked as deprecated for quite some time was taken offline? That's completely and entirely your own fault. Twitter has done nothing wrong actually.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

17 points by davewiner 14y ago

Dave, I really like RSS. I signed up to play with early functionality for radio2 when you let folk do that, and I agree with everything you're saying about twitter. Why aren't you trying to replace it with the very decentralized thing you wish for? The various tools you're creating are either clients for the existing social networks, or aggregators/combiners/distributors -- none of which make us (or you, actually) any less reliant on Twitter. The fact that you're as vulnerable to Twitter's whims -- you, who's enmeshed in this world and understands more about it than I'll ever hope to, and has created formats to allow us to work apart from silos -- means I have no chance. Is there something I'm not getting?

davewiner 14y ago
Of course we're trying to replace it. My feed is out there for anyone to follow. http://links.scripting.com/rss.xml http://links.scripting.com/rss.xml What else can I do? The press doesn't want to write about this, presumably because I'm not going to pay any money to sponsor their conferences. I just don't have the power to get everyone to provide feeds, if I did, I would.

kaolinite 14y ago

Me too. Was just emailed by a client complaining that their Twitter feed had gone down. I was using the JSON API too but needed to change from http://twitter.com/.. http://twitter.com/... to http://api.twitter.com/1/.. http://api.twitter.com/1/...

awestley 14y ago

Better than a wave of defecation...

benatkin 14y ago

Yesterday I found that twitter wasn't working for my simplified posting interface and example node.js application https://justtweet.herokuapp.com/ https://justtweet.herokuapp.com/ so I set out to fix it. The first thing I did was add logging of the error. When I tried pushing it back to Heroku I found that something else broke, because I didn't specify versions for my dependencies in my package.json and it got newer versions with a slightly different API. When I got it working I had refactored my code and changed the API url to https and to specify the version number as 1.1. Thanks to Dave's work note I found out why: > "All non-versioned API endpoints, such as http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline, will cease functioning." http://worknotes.scripting.com/october2012/101112ByDw/unbreakingOurTwitter http://worknotes.scripting.com/october2012/101112ByDw/unbrea... Mine was api.twitter.com without a version, not twitter.com. https://github.com/resources/justtweet.herokuapp.com/commit/100dda50a34a51455e6cad553e07a28e66723646#commitcomment-1981403 https://github.com/resources/justtweet.herokuapp.com/commit/... I see why they felt the need to break twitter.com to simplify their deployment but I don't see why they thought it made sense to break api.twitter.com urls without a version number.

abraham 14y ago
It isn't just deployment. Every version requires extra code paths for developers to maintain.
- benatkin 14y ago
  I didn't mean to say that it would be effortless. What I'm saying is that having the API on twitter.com can complicate twitter's web app, which should ideally be a separate service from their API. That might be a change worth making, even if it caused problems for some API users. I don't think keeping a non-versioned url at api.twitter.com would complicate things enough to justify turning it off, unless they didn't care about small API users.

leeoniya 14y ago

i could be wrong, but deprecation != removal (which is what this sounds like)

joekrill 14y ago
It sounds like they had been previously deprecated. Which implies eventual removal. The guy even says: "I admit I wasn't paying attention to their deprecation".

prodigal_erik 14y ago

Did they completely fail to notice the API was still in use, or just not care? Thou shalt not break working code.

bonzoesc 14y ago
The now-deprecated API probably wasn't working for Twitter, so they got rid of it. Developers were warned before this happened, and your code is your responsibility, not Twitter's.
ceejayoz 14y ago
We're still talking about the folks who just kneecapped the popular third-party Twitter clients, right?

sergiotapia 14y ago

So you're crying foul because something marked as deprecated for quite some time was taken offline? That's completely and entirely your own fault. Twitter has done nothing wrong actually.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]