The List Grows: Twitter APIs Kill Another App

Twitter?s aggressive and well-guided methods have caused several competing social media networks and applications to shut down. News.me gave an announcement on October 24, 2012 that it will be shutting down on the iOS App Store, which in effect will give more leeway to Twitter in the curation space. The closing of the Twitter app is said to have been caused by the social media website?s strict third-party policies that continue to get stricter over time. Twitter is also said to be taking away opportunities from other developers in the curation space. New.me will instead focus on Digg curation and remove its curated news app which used to be available on the iPad and iPhone. Makers of the News.me application said it was created with the intention of keeping up with the latest news stemming from various social networks. The creators eventually partnered with Betaworks. Betaworks moved on to acquire News.me. Twitter has been making a lot of adjustments to its API or application programming interface, rendering a number of third-party apps compromised. API is the software code that the social micro-blogging site publishes in public so that applications can be created and developed by third-party developers thereby allowing them to interact with the site better. The API changes were generally not intended by Twitter to axe a number of existing apps on its platform, but to make it easier and more convenient for third-party applications and Twitter products to function. Online users who have already downloaded apps before from News.me will still be given support although the app itself will no longer be offered in the App Store. According to Jake Levine, General Manager of News.me, the recent API guidelines introduced by Twitter rendered News.me apps in violation of the latest display requirements. The company had to make a critical choice between investing more useful resources in the apps just to meet the new guidelines or completely remove the apps from the store. News.me decided that it would be too much of a waste already to add more time and effort into an app that will ultimately compete with Twitter, the same platform which it depends on.