Twitter has got some changes on the horizon and they are not going to make developers happy. The company will, “deliver a consistent Twitter experience”, be restricting how the Twitter API is used.

With the release of the 1.1 version of the Twitter API, external applications will require approval, every request to the API will have to be authenticated, they will be introducing per-endpoint rate limiting and throwing in several developer requirements when it comes to developing apps.

Apps with or expected to gain more than 1 million users will have to work directly with Twitter. Those apps expected to use more than 100,000 user tokens will have to get Twitter’s permission for the app. Those that already have more that 100,000 users as of yesterday will only have to comply once they have doubled their user base.

“You’ll be able to maintain your application to serve your users, but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission.”

Several apps are likely to be left out in the cold when these changes come into effect, particularly those that “mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” Tweetbot and Echofon are two such applications that were specifically named in the new requirements.

Source: AllThingsD