After placing its API behind a paywall, Twitter is now reversing course and making an exception for emergency and transportation companies — a few of which have already left the platform.
In a tweet despatched out from the Twitter Dev account on Tuesday, the platform says “verified gov or publicly owned providers who tweet climate alerts, transport updates and emergency notifications” can proceed to make use of the API freed from cost. Precisely what the corporate means by “verified” is unclear. Does it solely apply if the company has enabled a brand new “verified” account, and have they got to pay to get checkmarks on any sub accounts which will require API entry?
We already began seeing the results of those API modifications final month when a number of emergency and transportation accounts encountered points posting alerts to the platform. Whereas among the Nationwide Climate Service’s accounts had been suspended from Twitter with no rationalization, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and Bay Space Speedy Transit (BART) additionally skilled disruptions to their API entry.
With the free model of Twitter’s API, customers can solely publish 1,500 automated tweets monthly. Costs enhance from there, with the hobbyist Primary tier costing $100 monthly and a “low-cost” enterprise plan reportedly reaching as much as $42,000 monthly. This setup clearly isn’t splendid for the quite a few climate and transportation companies that ship out a number of automated tweets every day to alert customers of emergencies or journey delays.