With its recent API access pricing shooting through the roof, causing widespread outrage among SMBs and developers, Twitter has come back with a new API access tier that will provide more Tweets access for a more reasonable price. That brings Twitter’s tier options to a grand total of four, which still isn’t great, but at least there’s one more choice to consider.
For 5-Grand
Twitter’s new ‘Pro’ Tweet API offering provides developers with access to a million Tweets per month, at the very low price of $5,000 a month – or roughly $60k a year. For some, that’ll be an improvement to the existing access points, which have already priced many academics and developers out of their various projects. Still, $5,000 a month for a million Tweets is a lot, especially when Twitter’s free API access, up until February this year, provided developers with similar access at no cost.
Twitter’s new API access charges, which it implemented to combat the creation of bot armies, are a significant jump on the previous costs, with Elon and Co. looking to do all they can to bring in more revenue for the company. The updated pricing immediately saw many public service tools, like transport alerts, announce that they’d be canceling their automated Twitter updates – though Twitter has since announced that approved services like these will still be able to access the API for free.
However, that doesn’t cover many other bot tools and services that also provide value, and the risk in Twitter’s approach is that it could become a less valuable utility as a result, which may eventually impact usage. As noted, Musk sees the API as a potential vector for bot swarms. And similar to Twitter Blue, Elon’s hoping that by tacking on extra charges to such access, it’ll effectively make it cost-prohibitive for bot creators to keep running their schemes. Though there is another potential consideration in Musk’s API and access price rises that is aligned with his personal grievances.
Twitter’s also taking on Microsoft over its use of Twitter data, via API access, which it claims is beyond the limitations imposed within Microsoft’s approved usage. Microsoft is now partnered with OpenAI, a company that Musk once had a significant investment in, and his view is that OpenAI has essentially stolen Twitter data to train its LLM systems to fuel AI tools like ChatGPT.
This could be another factor in Musk’s decision to hike up the price of Twitter API access, to restrict other companies from taking Twitter’s proprietary data, and profiting off of his content in a similar way. Meanwhile, Musk’s also building his own generative AI model, which will be free of ‘woke bias’, and everything considered, it’s not beyond the scope of possibility that Musk’s pushing up the costs of Twitter API access to fend off his various business rivals.
The Wrap
The main impetus here seems to be Twitter’s need to diversify its income, with subscriptions, API access, and advertising ideally settling into a more equal share of the company’s revenue pie. While this seems unlikely to be the end result, Musk’s trying new things – and maybe there are enough potential indicators there to keep pushing, maximizing Twitter’s opportunities. Or maybe there isn’t anything scheduled at all, and Twitter eventually just rolls back all of these updates. That approach is seemingly part of what made Musk successful, his willingness to publicly try and fail, might just present new opportunities for the business.
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