Technology

Twitter is giving developers more time to adjust to its API platform overhaul, which has affected some apps‘ ability to continue operating in the same fashion. The company clarified this morning, along with news of the general availability of its Account Activity API, that it will be delaying the shutdown of some of its legacy APIs by three months& time. That is, APIs originally slated for a June 19, 2018 shutdown & including Site Streams, User Streams, and legacy Direct Message Endpoints & will now be deprecated on Wednesday, August 16, 2018.

The news follows an announcement from Favstarthat said it will end its business when the older APIs are shut down for good. And it follows the relaunched Mac app from Tweetbot,which includes a list of changes as to how the app will work when the API changes go into effect.

Twitter had said back in April that it would delay the scheduled June 19th deprecation date, but didn&t announce a new date at that time. That may have led some developers to believe that a longer reprieve was in order while Twitter rethought its plans.

Today, Twitter says thatnot the case & itonly a three-month delay.

With the public launch of the Account Activity API, developers can transition to the new API platform.

Plus, the beta that only offered Direct Messages is being shut down on August 16th, 2018, Twitter says. (Migration details on that arehere.)

Twitter is also reducing the number of subscriptions from the 35 accounts allowed during the beta to 15 free subscriptions for its Premium Sandbox of the API & the free tier meant as way for developers to experiment. The paid Premium tier offers up to 250 accounts, and Enterprise pricing is available, too. (See chart below).

But developers will have to reach out to Twitter directly to receive enterprise pricing details.

In addition, Twitter makes it clear that any apps that rely on the older Site Streams and User Streams APIs, will have to live without that functionality after August 16th. It claims this won&t affect most apps & only a small percentage.

&As a few developers have noticed, thereno streaming connection capability or home timeline data, which are only used by a small amount of developers (roughly 1% of monthly active apps),& writes Twitter Senior Product Manager, Kyle Weiss, in a blog post. &As we retire aging APIs, we have no plans to add these capabilities to Account Activity API or create a new streaming service for related use cases.&

Boom.

Well, at least the announcement addressesdevelopers& complaints about a lack of information from Twitter regarding the pricing of the new APIs, and how long before all the changes kick in, given the news of a delay.

As Favstarcreator Tim Haines explained when announcing the appshutdown, the lack of information made running its business too difficult.

&&Twitter… [has] not been forthcoming with the details or pricing.Favstar can&t continue to operate in this environment of uncertainty,& he told TechCrunch earlier this week.

As for those 1 percent of apps that use the soon-to-be-depracated APIs & like Talon, Tweetbot, Tweetings or Twitterific & the plan was to switch over to the Enterprise Account Activity API. But they were frustrated that Twitter wasn&t saying how much it would cost; so they didn&t know if it would be an affordable option to sustain their business. It looks like they&ll now get those details.

But as those developers pointed out recently, there were broader concerns that the API changes were meant to actively discourage &client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream consumer client experience,& as Twitter had once said. Unfortunately for end users, the companydecision is especially frustrating, given that Twitter shut down its native Mac app.

It does appear that Twitter is looking to impact the functionality of these &1 percent& of apps, given that it will no longer let them stream in tweets as they&re posted (itmaking the statuses/home_timeline endpoint available instead & which is not streaming). And other notifications will be delayed by a couple of minutes, in some cases, as Tweetbotcreator, Paul Haddad, explained yesterday.

Along with the news today, Twitter shared links to resources to help developers migrate to new APIs and learn more & including thedeveloper portal, amigration guide, aresources page that outlines these changes, and Twitter&scommunity forums.

Food delivery startup Deliveroo is feeling generous today. The company is handing out equity to all full-time staff members. In other words, 2,000 employees are going to receive the equivalent of $13.5 million in Deliveroo shares.

&Our phenomenal growth and success has been made possible thanks to the hard work, commitment and passion of the people who make this company what it is,& co-founder and CEO Will Shu told Reuters. &And that deserves recognition which is why I want all employees to be owners in Deliveroo and to have a real stake in the companyfuture as we expand and grow.&

This is a great way to prove that you care about your employees. And yet, there are a few caveats.

First, the company is currently worth over $2 billion. In total, Deliveroo is just handing out 0.675 percent of the company to its employees. I&m sure plenty of early employees already have equity.

But those who joined more recently aren&t likely to get rich over this — it represents a $6,750 equity bonus per employee on average. And shares usually vest after a certain amount of time.

Second, this is the perfect example of the gig economy. In addition to the usual benefits, full-time employees are getting rewarded once again. If you&re a self-employed rider, Deliveroo doesn&t want to thank you.

Arguably, Deliveroo still thinks that riders are disposable. They might be the ones who pick up food in restaurants and hand it to customers, but they will never be full-time employees.

Sure, Deliveroo and Uber Eats are now providing free accident insurance coverage, but it mostly covers hospital bills. Riders have been asking for better rights, and this insurance package is just a good way to ease the pressure.

Working with contractors at scale is the backbone of Uber, Deliveroo and many other on-demand startups. This way, startups don&t have to pay the minimum wage or expensive benefits. Startups can also terminate their relationships with their ‘partners& without any consequence.

Ita great way to pressure your contractors in working more for less money. And todaymove by Deliveroo is further proof that riders are just an afterthought.