Thursday, October 11, 2012; 6:59:33 AM Eastern
Unbreaking our Twitter
- We got hit by a wave of deprecation on Twitter yesterday.
- First thing that happened (or so it appeared) is that Microliner stopped working. Since yesterday was rollout day for Microliner, it seemed that this was a response from Twitter to the edgy-ness of the app. We do display people's tweets as lines in an outline. But, we figured that maybe they'd see how interesting this project is and let it keep running. We're not trying to steal anything from them. The tweets were in response to ones generated by Microliner. So it's not as if we're trying to replace Twitter. But that was worth a shrug -- okay -- they don't want us to do it, so be it.
- But later, Radio2 stopped working. That's much more serious because it's mission-critical. We use that software to keep an archive of everything we post to Twitter without having to depend on Twitter to provide one (they don't at this time). The only alternative would be to do all our tweeting inside Twitter. That would mean all my other uses for my linkblog would go away. Since that's a big part of the reason I do it, well -- there's no choice -- I would stop using Twitter.
- But it turns out that none of this actually happened. Instead it was an unlikely coincidence. The very day that Microliner was released was also the day they turned off some parts of the API. I admit I wasn't paying attention to their deprecations. Figuring I'd cross the bridge when I came to it. If they shut us off that way, I'd decide at that time if I wanted to do the work to get it all working again. I really disapprove of platform vendors doing this. I think there are so many more of us than them, that they should stay compatible. But I don't get a say in this. And unless you work at Twitter, Inc, you don't either.
- To Microliner users, many of whom are OPML newbies, to get the latest bits, choose Update opml.root from the File menu. That should get it working again for you.
- Update: Here's the worknote that outlines the details. I was able to get Radio2 and Microliner working again. Yehi! :-)
- Update #2: I almost thanked Twitter. But that would be too weird.