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Twitter puts its foot down, calls for client consistency and tightens controls. Realistically, the writing has been on the wall for quite some time when it comes to Twitter's attitude toward non-official clients -- likely around the time the company turned Tweetie into Twitter for iPhone. Now, in a developer forum, Twitter's Ryan Sarver has penned a post which leaves little doubt.
"[...]user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions." says Sarver.
It's time for that to come to an end, Twitter believes, and the company will begin enforcing standards very strictly.
Existing clients will continue to function, reveals Sarver, so it's not that Twitter is simply pulling the pin.
Popular apps like Seesmic and TweetDeck likely won't be affected either, since they're designed to provide a more complete social networking dashboard -- not merely a different interface for Twitter. Sarver also encourages developers to start focusing on vertical markets (like customer relations) and analysis instead of mimicking official client functionality.
source: Twitter Dev Group