Twitter requires mobile numbers for app-development? Why?

1 point

12 years ago

I am terribly sorry but I didn't know where else to talk about this. I simply want to vent, if only to maintain my sanity. Apologies if I am disrupting your flow of reading HN. That said, thanks for reading.

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https://dev.twitter.com/notifications/new-apps-registration

This is an official twitter thread announcing the change to application creation and development. Most notably, the policy of requiring mobile numbers to be tied to accounts, if you want to create/upgrade an app with write/write-DM permissions. The whole thread is full of developers citing their problems with the change and specially the new requirement of tying-in mobile numbers to accounts for upgraded permissions.

To be honest, I find it absurd as well.

1. What happens to teams of developers developing apps for a client?

2. What happens to a developer who creates different apps under a separate accounts? Does that mean the developer can't have more than twitter accounts than mobile numbers at any given time?

3. Finally, what is the purpose of tying a mobile number to a twitter account? Wouldn't it be smarter to allow developers to associate the same number to multiple accounts?

Here, in India, Twitter has short-codes for only THREE carriers in the entire country. If you have a number not belonging to any of these three carriers, you have to use a long-code (read international number) which is a one-way channel - i.e. you send the text but you don't get a response - you are flying blind and that too with international texts!!

Well, the long-codes do not work and the short-codes aren't an option for me, since I have the wrong carrier.

Add to that, twitter's support isn't very responsive. Granted, they have their own (much bigger) headaches to deal with but if you are going to make a policy that bizzare, at least ensure that it is non-buggy AND all-inclusive!