This, and other actions like it, are only going to drive more people to the underground bot/warez economy wherein terms of use and official API channels don't apply. unfortunately in that world many of the tools also compromise user security as well.
Unless Twitter, and other widely adopted platform providers, find a balance between corporate interests and supporting users interacting with their services in the ways that they prefer to do so, we will see more and more people obtaining Tweet-bots and Friend-adders, from illegitimate sources which bypass API's altogether.
Except that there's no reason it has to be underground. For a long time, instant messaging services tried to block third party clients, but I've never heard of them trying to take legal action. The Twitter TOS claims that "you have to use the Twitter API if you want to reproduce, modify, create derivative works", but that's copyright language, and Twitter does not own the copyright to tweets; only individual tweeters would have standing to sue for copyright infringement (see the recent Craigslist controversy), and I'm not sure such a claim would be valid anyway. There's the CFAA, but... anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if Twitter made a first by suing the makers of an unofficial client. In the meantime, dunno if Apple would let it into the App Store, but they could freely sell their client from their home page.
Well, that's my dream. tent.io is nice, but it's not going to replace Twitter anytime soon, and I actively dislike app.net. But we're past the age when third party clients can be effectively blocked by technical means, and I want to see their return.
Of course, Twitter can prevent the use of any of their trademarks, making branding difficult, to say the least. Sure, you could make an unofficial Twitter client without any problems, but Twitter might be able to take legal action if you state anywhere that it's a "Twitter client."
Plus, these cat-and-mouse games require a user base that is fairly quick to update; if Twitter blocks one avenue (and they will try desperately to do so if one of these clients gains a decent number of users), an update for the client is likely necessary. I would think the easier way would be for users to get their own API keys and secrets and enter them into the app.
Well, that would be straight-up tortious interference. But I feel like now that clients have moved on to higher-level protocols, and exist on so many platforms, Twitter would have a hard time blocking use of API keys extracted from the official apps. If I have time, I'll retrieve them myself...
Technically, if those keys could be extracted (I'm no expert on that), that would be the easier option, as Twitter cannot really afford to revoke those without massive headaches on their end. You likely couldn't distribute those keys, but I have no idea if automatic extraction at install time would be fair game on a large scale.
Actually, keys are not copyrightable, so the only obstacle I know of to distributing them is the DMCA - which I think doesn't apply here, since the key does not circumvent an access or copy control measure (it doesn't bypass the requirement to log in or anything like that, and Twitter.app has no technical measures to prevent you from copying tweets).
My bad with the copyright, although it looks like Twitter leaves themselves nice leeway to kill at least your personal account for it, as it is forbidden to "access or search..the Services by any means other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Twitter (and only pursuant to those terms and conditions)"[1], which I would read to exclude the (slightly-modified, I believe) access Twitter's own apps get.
I doubt it. In fact, I think of the majority of the people I know if they were to try and download Tweetbot and couldn't, they'll be mad at Tweetbot.
Even if Tweetbot states something like "Twitter has limited the number of clients we can sell" they'll still think Tweetbot is stupid. But most of them won't think "I wonder if there is a way around this." And then head to some warez type solution.
Instead they'll look and see if there is an alternative, or more likely, just stick with Twitter's website.
I just don't buy the "This will drive people to pirated software" argument.
You misinderstood me. I'm not saying that people will be driven to pirated software. I'm saying that people will be driven to software written by pirates (so to speak).
There is a subtle distinction here.
I'm addressing the underground marketplaces where Tweetbot-like applications already flourish. These apps, quite often, don't use any API at all but instead rely on hidden browser windows and net.webclient interfaces to simulate browser actions.
Unless Twitter, and other widely adopted platform providers, find a balance between corporate interests and supporting users interacting with their services in the ways that they prefer to do so, we will see more and more people obtaining Tweet-bots and Friend-adders, from illegitimate sources which bypass API's altogether.