For a long time now, Twitter has had a limit on the functionality of third party apps for its service in the form of tokens. Each third-party app was only allowed 100,000 tokens, after which they could not authorize anymore. With each token basically representing a new user signing up, Twitter was hoping that any third-party apps that got too big for their britches would hit the limit and users would simply download the official app. When this recently happened to a well-loved Twitter app, Fenix, many a would-be user were heartbroken. While users who already had a token could still use Fenix, it could no longer accept new users, meaning there was no point in people downloading it. The app wound up being pulled from the Play Store and, for the most part, everybody thought that would be the end of Fenix’s story.
News broke on Twitter around 11 AM EST on Thursday, via a humorous GIF image posted by Fenix’s developer team, that Fenix was back in the Play Store and was able to take on new users again. They did not say what had happened. Fenix developer Matteo Villa said that he had “been in contact with the Twitter team and they’ve helped to fix the issue.” When pressed about the details Villa simply said that he “cannot share any more details at the moment…” which means that there is likely a good reason for keeping the details quiet.
Although the number of users that Fenix can now take in, if it’s limited at all, is an unknown factor, the app is back to being live and downloadable on the Play Store. The story of the app running out of tokens and somehow getting a free pass from Twitter to snap up more users is likely to get it some decent exposure, which could lead to a spike in the number of users. With the install ticker in the Play Store pegging the app at “50,000-100,000” users as of this writing, it seems that the publicity has yet to attract another 100,000. The app is available for the relatively princely sum of $5.49, a price that at least 100,000 users, it seems, were happy to pay.