If it weren't for the many applications that helped grow Twitter, this service would not be nearly as successful as it is today. Imposing these arcane limits is

If it weren't for the many applications that helped grow Twitter, this service would not be nearly as successful as it is today. Imposing these arcane limits is a slap in the face to the developers who made Twitter so popular in the first place. This should also serve as a warning to people who build on top of other social networks. These networks oftentimes can only rely on their own information to make money, which increases the probability that they will block access to user data (or at least make it very difficult to access).