While third-party Twitter clients may have better designs and offer some possibilities the original app lacks, they still didn’t have access to some features, like reverse order. Now it’s about to change. With the updated API, Twitter will enable third-party apps to use all of the features of the native app, plus a bit more.

A reverse-chronological timeline is one of those things you first don’t appreciate and then cannot do without. With the newly introduced API V2 and its recent update, it has become available to third-party developers. For example, the famous Tweetbot, one of the most popular alternative Twitter apps, was among the first to react to the news. Its users will probably see the newly available functionality soon.
For Twitter, this update was long overdue. The previous version of its API was introduced in 2012, which is a very long time in our era of social media constantly evolving. Its abilities are seriously upgraded now. For example, after the upgrade, API V2 allows for 180 requests in a 15-minute frame (the previous version only could 15) and loads up to 3,200 tweets (previously the limit was 800). For active users, this will make scrolling through long feeds much smoother.

The updated version also allows for retrieving data like cards, metrics, polls, and stuff along with the timeline. Previously, developers addressed this data through API V 1.1, combined with V2. Now, all this data is available via simple requests through API V2.

With these updates, soon third-party clients will also make more use of it, so expect updates. Along with this, alternative apps may invent more uses to this API, maybe introducing new ways of viewing, searching, and so on. Are you using any of third-party Twitter apps? How does this experience compare to the native one? Share your impressions with us in the comments!