You may remember over the weekend we wrote about how Falcon Pro had hit the 100k user limit set by Twitter for third-party apps. Well because the app hit that 100k limit, the app is basically useless for new users. In fact, I’ve seen Falcon Pro’s developer Joaquim Verges talking with a few other popular Android Twitter app developers yesterday. Including M. Saleh Esmaeili of Carbon, Daniel Huckaby of Tweedle and Richard Hyland of Tweetings. They did a short Hangout on Air on Google+ yesterday where they talked about Twitter’s changes to the API along with app piracy. It was actually quite informative, even for the end user. As I learned a few things that I didn’t know before hand.
Yesterday, Joaquim Verges raised the price of Falcon Pro from $1 to an eye-opening $132.13, but why? Well since it’s basically useless to new users, it’s to discourage new users from purchasing the app. Now I saw some people ask yesterday why he doesn’t just remove it from the Play Store. Well it’s not that easy. If he removes Falcon Pro from the Play Store, then current users wouldn’t be able to reinstall or get updates. Here’s what he added to the app description and as to why the app costs so much now:
** ATTENTION PLEASE READ THIS **
** TOKEN LIMIT REACHED – DO NOT BUY – WORKS ONLY FOR ONLY FOR EXISTING USERS **
** THE APP WILL NOT ACCEPT NEW USERS BECAUSE OF TWITTER LIMITATIONS (100k tokens max) **
Help me Extend the access token limit by signing this petition :http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/extend-falcon-pro
And Please RELEASE your access token from the Twitter settings on the web if you’re not using the app anymore.
About 6 months ago, Twitter announced their new version of the API which is version 1.1. There were a lot of changes in the new version. But the one that has got most of these developers on the edge of their seats are the 100,000 tokens. Each user is assigned a token. So theoretically, an app can’t have more than 100k users. Which really isn’t a whole lot. Today, Falcon’s official Twitter app mentioned that Twitter has denied their request for more tokens:
I’m sure a lot of you will agree that Twitter saying Falcon Pro doesn’t offer any features that the official Twitter app doesn’t, is a bunch of BS. To put it bluntly. If you had a choice between the official Twitter app and Falcon Pro, which would you choose? Obviously Falcon Pro because of all the extra features it has over Twitter for Android. It’s just a shame what Twitter is doing to these developers, who in most cases aren’t making money off of these apps.
Don’t forget, there is also a petition to get Twitter to raise the token limit. If you haven’t already signed it, go ahead. Hopefully it can get Twitter to raise the limit.