Nearly eighteen months ago, we gave developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” And to reiterate what I wrote in my last post, that guidance continues to apply today.

More ominous words from Twitter, but it doesn’t seem to be the end of the world for third-party clients.

Twitter is also limiting the number of users a client on their platform can have, saying:

… you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens.

We will not be shutting down client applications that use those endpoints and are currently over those token limits. If your application already has more than 100,000 individual user tokens, you’ll be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you reach 200% of your current user token count (as of today) — as long as you comply with our Rules of the Road. Once you reach 200% of your current user token count, you’ll be able to maintain your application to serve your users, but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission.

This could be a huge challenge to new Twitter clients and rapidly growing clients, depending on how strict Twitter is about giving permission to developers to authorize more users to use their app.