Twitter recently announced they will no longer support free access to the Twitter API. Everyone seems up in arms about it and I can’t figure out what an API even is. What would doing something like this actually affect?
I’ve tried looking up what an API is, but I can’t really wrap my head around it.
Edit: I’ve had so many responses to read through and there’s been a ton of helpful explanations! Much appreciated everyone 🙂 thanks for keeping this doofus in the know
In: 419
An API is a program that returns data. It gives people access to the data without using the website.
My wife uses it for research in college. She can request data from Twitter with specific dates and search terms, then with that data she can make a spreadsheet that shows thousands of tweets related to her study. So instead of using the Twitter website and copy and pasting a bunch of tweets, she can use the API to download thousands at once
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