Jetpack for WordPress: End of Twitter Auto-Sharing

Jetpack announced that the auto-share feature of the social part of the plugin will cease to work for Twitter, blaming last minute changes by Twitter and an inability to come to an agreement.

The Jetpack announcement explained:

“Twitter decided, on short notice, to dramatically change the terms and pricing of the Twitter API.

We have attempted to work with Twitter in good faith to negotiate new terms, but we have not been able to reach an agreement.

As a result, the Twitter connection on Jetpack Social will cease to work, and your blog posts will no longer be auto-shared to Twitter.”

Twitter offers a free limited version access of it’s API to individuals, for one app ID.

It also offers a “Basic” version costing $100/month for two app ids and it doesn’t say how much the Enterprise level costs.

Those prices are arguably expensive and counterproductive for a site like Twitter that is losing users to Mastodon and other social media site.

Twitter’s new API access rates make little economic sense to Twitter (which should seek to make it easier for users to engage on the site) and for services like Jetpack that can bring thousands of daily users.

Jetpack recommends sharing tweets manually by copying the URL and pasting it into Tweets.

Other Twitter Apps Affected by Twitter API Change

Unannounced changes to Twitter’s API beginning on January 2023 were the first signs of trouble.

Companies like Twitterrific and Tweetbot announced that they were shutting down because their users could no longer connect through the Twitter API.

Twitterrific Quits Twitter

In a blog post announcing the shutdown, the developers pleaded for their users to not request refunds because, as they said, that would be devasting for a small company such as their.

The developers of Twitterrrific wrote:

“We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter – a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.

… if you were subscriber to Twitterrific for iOS, we would ask you to please consider not requesting a refund from Apple. The loss of ongoing, recurring revenue from Twitterrific is already going to hurt our business significantly, and any refunds will come directly out of our pockets – not Twitter’s and not Apple’s.

To put it simply, thousands of refunds would be devastating to a small company like ours.”

Tweetbot Quits Twitter

Tapbot, the makers of Tweetbot were also affected and were forced to shutdown their service.

The makers of Tweetbot wrote:

“On January 12th, 2023, without warning, Elon Musk ordered his employees at Twitter to suspend access to 3rd party clients which instantly locked out hundreds of thousands of users from accessing Twitter from their favorite clients.”

Tapbot tweeted an additional explanation:

“Say Goodbye to Tweetbot.

We’ve been proud to serve you over the last 12+ years, but due to circumstances beyond our control, we have to shut down Tweetbot.”

Twitter API Policy Doesn’t Affect Other Services

But there seems to be more to this story that what was shared by Jetpack and other apps and services.

Social sharing services like Hootsuite and Buffer have reached agreements with Twitter and continue to provide Twitter tweet scheduling functions.

An interesting twist to the Twitter API saga is that social sharing app Buffer is not affected by this change.

Buffer posted an update to their blog stating that the change to Twitter’s API will not affect their users.

Their announcement stated that everything will continue working as before.

Buffer wrote:

“We have a longstanding, enterprise relationship with Twitter built over the last 12 years and have worked directly with their team on the path forward.”

Buffer also tweeted this announcement on Sunday April 30, 2023:

“If you use Buffer for your Twitter account we want you to know that Buffer users are not impacted by any of Twitter’s recent API changes.

Your Buffer account and Twitter connections will continue working as usual for free and paid plans.”

One has to ask, why was Buffer was able to reach an agreement and Jetpack could not?

Jetpack Social

Jetpack is an all-in-one plugin that provides security, performance and marketing related functionality that is available in a premium and free version.

The various components of the plugin exist in standalone version that can be used on a modular basis, allowing users to choose the needed functions.

Jetpack Social is a component that provides social media functionality to WordPress sites.

The plugin contains an auto-share features that unlocks automatic social media article sharing as well as scheduling shares across the most popular social media websites.

The Social plugin shares posts to the following social media platforms:

Twitter will cease to become available for auto-sharing.

Jetpack announced that it will be rolling out social sharing to Instagram and Mastodon.

Mastodon is a popular social media alternative for Twitter that has experienced exponential growth since Twitter began slowly falling apart after Elon Musk took it over, fired key employees across every department and alienated advertisers.

Instagram is a wildly popular photo and video social media sharing site.

It will be interesting to see how Jetpack Social intends to integrate text-based article posts into sharing on an image and video sharing platform.

Read Jetpack’s announcement:

The End of Twitter Auto-Sharing

Featured image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands