Twitter Tightens API Rules: LinkedIn Partnership Is First Casualty

A three-year agreement that allowed tweets to auto-publish to LinkedIn is the first casualty of Twitter’s plans to tighten rules that cover how its API may be used.

In a blog post today, Twitter’s Michael Sippey says the company is dialing up enforcement of its API terms with partners in the company’s continuing pursuit of giving users a consistent Twitter experience.

Ultimately, we want to make sure that the Twitter experience is straightforward and easy to understand — whether you’re on Twitter.com or elsewhere on the web.

The first casualty of Twitter’s increased enforcement is an agreement that it’s had with LinkedIn since 2009. In a separate blog post, LinkedIn’s content chief Ryan Roslansky confirms that users can no longer auto-publish tweets from Twitter to LinkedIn. Instead, users that want to publish on both sites simultaneously will have to publish on LinkedIn and use the sharing tools there to send updates to Twitter.

Twitter’s announcement also warns developers to expect more of this going forward: “… in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used.”