As Twitter kills third-party apps, new life blooms on Mastodon
As Twitter continues its implosion under the chaotic ownership of billionaire Elon Musk, a new social media world order is being born. The killing off of an entire software ecosystem by fiat has given a boost to development elsewhere.
While Twitter is not the biggest social network in terms of users, it does have outsized influence. Odds are most folks reading this are not Twitter users — only 23 percent of U.S. adults are, according to Pew Research — but its population of journalists, business leaders, politicians and celebrities give it more cachet than its numbers would indicate. As a result, its wild machinations of late get more attention than they might otherwise.
In Twitter’s latest incidence of self-harm, the service earlier this month shut off access to its feeds by third-party apps, without warning and/or explanation. Twitter has long allowed developers to create software as an alternative to the company’s own apps and website, though that relationship has been rocky at times. But it’s safe to say that most of the third-party Twitter apps were superior to the service’s own offerings, if for no other reason than that they did not show ads.
But Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter hit his wallet hard, and not just for Twitter. The price of the stock in his EV company Tesla has plummeted, along with his net worth, which is closely tied to the electric carmaker. The Guinness Book of World Records announced earlier this month that Musk had set a record for the biggest loss of fortune, dropping $182 billion since November. Analysts blame much of the decline on his Twitter antics causing a lack of confidence among Tesla investors. (Though on Tuesday, Tesla reported record revenue and beat analysts’ earnings expectations for the final quarter of 2022.)
Musk sold about $8 billion in Tesla stock to help finance the Twitter purchase, which happened before the share price tumbled.
And Twitter itself is bringing in less cash. As a result of massive staff cuts that left the company’s technical stability in doubt, and the restoration of banned accounts that are now free to spew vitriol, harassment and hate, Twitter’s advertisers are fleeing or pausing spending.
The company’s ad revenue was down 71 percent in December, Reuters reported. Ad sales make up 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue.
So the cutting off of non-addisplaying apps makes business sense for Twitter — but to have done so without a head’s up, or refusing to respond to developers’ queries about, was reckless at best and cowardly at worst. The company eventually amended its terms of service to forbid such apps, but it never did come out and say, “We did it because we need more eyeballs on ads,” which would have been the honest thing to do.
Not only was the move injurious to Twitter users who preferred the apps, it was devastating for the small developers of the software, particularly the more popular ones that had moved to a subscription model. Suddenly, those revenues vanished. The creators of two such apps appealed to their customers not to ask for refunds, warning it could bankrupt them.
If there’s a silver lining to this debacle, it’s that developers who crafted now-defunct apps for Twitter can devote their attention to the network that’s become the primary refuge for those leaving what’s known as “the birdsite”: Mastodon, the open-source, decentralized social platform that’s a destination for those who want more thoughtful conversation and less drama.
When I quit engaging regularly on Twitter in mid-December and made Mastodon my social network homestead (I’d had an account there since 2017), there were a handful of decent apps for iPhones and iPad. I didn’t count them at the time, but when I first looked in the App Store, I was … underwhelmed. I grabbed the official Mastodon iOS app, along with one called Metatext and made the latter the main way I used Mastodon on my iPhone at first.
Most newcomers start out using Mastodon via the web, where it can be less than user-friendly (see houstonchronicle.com/mastodon), depending on how the particular server — known as an instance — is configured. (Pro tip: Head into the settings once your Mastodon account is set up, then head to Appearance and check the “Enable advanced web interface” box.)
The best apps, however, make it look a lot like Twitter, or like the third-party apps that once served it. And given that most social media is accessed via mobile devices, that’s important.
As more people sign up for a presence on one of the many Mastodon instances the number of apps on both iOS and Android has exploded. There are now dozens of them available, and two very good ones appeared in Apple’s App Store last week. (I’ll look at Android apps for Mastodon in the coming weeks.)
My favorite, and the app that’s been long anticipated by Twitter refugees, is Ivory. It had been available for a while to those fast enough to grab spots in the beta program when it occasionally opened up.
But last week an “Early Access” version appeared in the App Store. It’s excellent.
And that’s because it has a superb pedigree. It’s made by Tapbots, the same two-person development team based out of Flower Mound near Fort Worth that created Tweetbot, long considered the gold standard for third-party Twitter apps. It has a similar look and feel, and anyone moving from Twitter to Mastodon via Ivory is going to feel at home.
The free version is good for seven days, then becomes read-only. You can subscribe to the app for $1.99 a month, $14.99 a year or, if you’re feeling generous, $24.99 a year.
Once you use Ivory, the generous tier feels appropriate — it’s that good. Oh, and a macOS version is coming later this year.
If you’re looking for a fully free Mastodon client for iOS, try Ice Cubes by developer Thomas Ricouard (though he has a mechanism in the app to accept donations). Like Ivory, Ice Cubes presents Mastodon in a friendly, Twitter-like view, but it has some unique features.
For example, you can view the public feeds for other Mastodon instances, not just the one you’re signed into. And it will let you quote a post, in which you comment above someone else’s link, photo or text post. This is something that is not built into Mastodon, and is considered controversial among some users there because the feature has been used by trolls to harass and bully people on Twitter.
But Ice Cubes’ inclusion of it shows the power of a decentralized, open service. Developers can take a feature that’s not yet found in the core product and add it. Twitter may have cut down the third-party forest, but over on Mastodon, you can see a thousand flowers blooming.