So, with the recent changes by Twitter and their impacts, does anyone think there’s a real alternative that power users will embrace? If it’s an opportunity to move to something, then who is creating the option that will take us into the next decade of microblogging?
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I don’t have an answer for you, but I will chime in. I live in Colorado and have come to rely on Twitter for fire and evacuation updates. It is by far the fastest way to get emergency updates. I have an “emergency” group that shows push notifications. All other notifications are turned off if they’re not in that group. Now that push notifications are not allowed on either Tweetbot or Twitterrific, is there another alternative?
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If I understand it right, the only option for push notifications is Twitter’s own app, which is pretty universally regarded as a horrible portal to Twitter. Having used it, I agree–compared to Tweetbot, it feels like it was thrown together by deranged lunatics.
I’d love it if Apple found a way to offer public iMessage feeds. Totally would replace twitter for me in heartbeat.
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I think that this might be a good thing. Although we won’t get push notifications, the applications will still work.
If anything, this might help those who might have become to the constant notifications.
/Devil’s Advocate
I am so sick and tired of this move by Twitter.
I’ve been present on Twitter for years, but never really used it. Haven’t really seen the reasons why it became huge, in the first place.
Up until about 2 months ago. I decided to give Twitter a decent try & a fair chance to win me over.
Partly because I wanted to cut back on Facebook as well as Instagram & SnapChat (I’ve been present on those three social media sites nearly 24/7 for the past years, mainly due to my job, though) but went on sick leave for a month due to stress. When I returned I wanted to make a real change of the time spent on social media, thus I gave Twitter a chance.
Anyway, my point is, finally I give Twitter a shot, and actually like it… a lot. And then they go and make a move like this 
Just as I’m really getting to like it, and want to check in a couple of times a day… ok allright… a couple of times every hour 
Anyway, I hope that Twitterific will go for the paid API tier, so their app will work with push, again.
Just my 2 cents. 
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If both the Twitter app and (say) Tweetbot are installed on your phone, just get the notifications via the official app and continue to use Tweetbot for your normal browsing. This should work I think (?)
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This is what I’ve done, but with Twitterific instead of Tweetbot.
Notifications are still coming in on-time from Twitterific though. Maybe it’ll take a few days to roll out.
Over the past year, my Twitter use basically dropped to checking once a week max until I picked up Tweetbot in April. I found myself using Twitter like I did back in 2013 or something. We’ll see what happens now. Very good chance my usage drops back off.
I’ve been with Twitter since 2011 or so, and sprang for Tweetbot years ago. I honestly didn’t realize just how good it was until I tried the native client back when these threats first appeared. It’s actually a huge reason why I was able to give up on Facebook and finally delete my account from there. Twitter through Tweetbot gave me clean, succinct information on exactly what I wanted to know about, ad free, and totally BS free. I dunno if there’s anything out there that could replace it.
But given how bad the world seems to be getting, maybe it’s better if I gave up on social media altogether. Sigh.
Really? 
I’ll have to give that a try
@mandaris , I explained I only used Twitter notifications for emergency notifications about fire and evacuations. I don’t understand how this is a “good thing” for me not to receive this information as quickly as possible. Am I misunderstanding your post? I know you signed it “devil’s advocate,” but seriously??? I sincerely doubt Twitter was trying to do us a favor by restricting their API — It sounds like it was a money decision.
I agree that some are much too attached to their phone and notifications going off every few minutes can be distracting, but that really isn’t the point of this post. There are legitimate reasons someone would want timely push notifications. There was an armed escaped convict in my neighborhood recently and the sheriffs dept put out a twitter notification to stay indoors until the person was apprehended… and then another notification giving the “all clear.” How is it a “good thing” not to receive these types of alerts if you choose to? After, I received a call from my neighbor to check in on me because there was a “reverse 911” that went to her land line and she was concerned I wouldn’t know because I don’t have a land line.
The point of my post is to figure out an alternative now that Twitter has made this decision, not to weigh the merits of notifications from Twitter. After a summer from hell with wildfires raging all around me, these notifications were a blessing. If there were no notifications, all was well, but if my home, or the home of loved ones needed evacuated from fire (or now flash flood) it was a “good thing” indeed to be alerted ASAP. It literally saved lives.
All I want to know now is if I can set up something similar or if I can still receive these notifications another way. If I can still get them and they will be delayed 1-2 minutes that is fine. I only want the notification if it is truly from my emergency list on twitter, and I can’t find a setting for this anywhere with Twitter’s own app. Am I missing something?
I did not use notifications and the real-time updates were only relevant for me during Apple events, so I think I can live with these changes. However, I’m afraid they will eventually try to kill third-party Apps. If they do, it’s the end of Twitter for me, because Twitter for me is a service. A service that I access via Tweetbot (on iOS and macOS). If I can’t use Tweetbot it’s over; the experience with the Twitter Apps is something I do not want.
I do have accounts on Mastodon and Micro.blog but I’m not sure either of those will now/ever take the role of Twitter.
Thinking about my actual use, I think this is the boat I’m in as well. It isn’t important to me to stream things, and that’s not the way I have ever really used it, and I’ve never allowed twitter to send me notifications. Overall, this change only upsets me because I cannot get stats that I used to enjoy seeing. Whenever I can no longer use Tweetbot is the day I leave Twitter. The thing that’s most important to me is the way I engage with Twitter. I don’t know if anything will take its place either.
I think this is exactly what they’re attempting to do. They can’t monetize those 3rd-party clients. They’re going to push everyone to their own iOS app and the website so that they can cram in sponsored tweets and ad content. The recent statements from Jack Dorsey, both public and the “leaked” memo, show that they’re clearly not listening to their users and don’t seem to care what happens on the service.
If they kill 3rd-party clients entirely, the platform will be useless for those who made Twitter relevant in the first place, and it’ll devolve into ghost accounts, bots and trolls.
I switched to Twitter when Google Reader went away. I use Twitter as an easily filterable (in Tweetbot) newsfeed from the online sites I like to follow. (I don’t tweet.) I doubt these changes will affect me personally: I don’t use DMs, and a delay of a minute or two in telling me the latest updates from one of the technology, art, or culture sites I like to read has zero effect. I certainly do feel sorry for those folks who use this in other ways and are adversely affected.
Assuming these changes are actually in effect for me as generally announced (?), a few minutes ago I compared my Tweetbot feed with the official web-based Twitter feed on my iMac (which official feed, like many, I personally found unuseable for my purposes). For me there was nothing on Twitter’s web-based feed that was not already showing in Tweetbot.
Because I fear/assume this could be just the first step toward further deprecating or eliminating third-party Twitter apps the announced changes induced me a few weeks ago to try the new generation of RSS readers. They have come a long ways since Google Reader. I selected Inoreader, populated it weeks ago with the feeds I read, and am ready-to-go on a moment’s notice if Twitter ever fails me.
First, I’m happy that the twitter service has helped you and those you care about. Those are all very good use cases and we can all see why Jack Dorsey would state that twitter would drive to be a daily utility.
But that is the thing, something like that should be a utility that our phones should be able to tap into. For example, I live in California and we have something called an Amber Alert. You get alerts without the need for an account. You can get alerts on your phone, billboards and radio.
As a society, we should be making sure that services such as this are expanded to handle use cases as you have described them.
Now, as far as the question of how to use the twitter app to get you what you want. I don’t know if they have a “vip” notification group on the roadmap. I would hope that they discover it needs to be there since they wrote:
We’re committed to understanding why people hire 3rd party clients over our own apps.
link: Twitter company email addresses why it's #BreakingMyTwitter | TechCrunch
Good discussion.
who is creating the option that will take us into the next decade of microblogging?
Obligatory mention of Mastodon. It’s like Twitter in that you have profiles, posts, followers, mentions, (chronological) feeds, hashtags, DMs, RTs, favs, etc. But it’s also unlike twitter in that it is:
- Open source, so there will always be a way to keep it working the way you like and no one person controls it. (The way the web should be!)
- Community owned, so if you wish Twitter had feature X, or was moderated to disallow hate-speech Y, or was more focussed around topic Z — or if you don’t — you can still find a server which suits what you want.
- Federated, so if Person A sets up a Mastodon server and a bunch of users register, and Person B sets up another server elsewhere which also gets a bunch of users, users from each server can follow each other and it’s still a big party…
I have my doubts as to whether a Twitter-like thing is really what the world needs in the long run, but if we have to have one, something which doesn’t rely on ads (and therefore controlled engagement) seems like a better way to go.
Any recommendation for a native macOS client?
Or do you only use Mastodon in the browser on that platform?
Good question. I don’t know of any native macOS client, so I just use the web (which has a pseudo-Tweetdecky columnar layout). I’d love a proper native client though.
I use Amaroq on iOS.