Microblogging platform Twitter on Thursday said that it will stop offering free access to its API (Application Programming Interface) starting February 9 and instead launch a paid version.
The Twitter Developer account announced in a series of tweets that the company will be discontinuing support for both the legacy v1.1 and the new v2 of its Twitter APIs.
"Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead," Twitter Developer account tweeted.
"Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week," it added. Moreover, the microblogging platform concluded by saying, "Twitter data are among the world's most powerful data sets.
We're committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us. We'll be back with more details on what you can expect next week."
Reacting to the information shared by Twitter, a user commented, "charging developers for creating features for your own product? lol you should be paying them."
Another user said, "Your API didn't update for like 3 month since the takeover, you suspended legit 3rd party app and NOW we wont be able to use it for free??
Even Facebook and YouTube API are free and they are updated." Meanwhile, Twitter under Elon Musk is now working on a payments system that will support accepted currencies with crypto functionality embedded into it.
According to a report in The Financial Times, the payments feature will support fiat currencies to start with.