As a part of its updated Display Guidelines yesterday, Twitter included a clause that said appeared to limit third-party apps like Pocket or Instapaper from integrating with clients. That’s not so, says Pocket in an official blog post.
The section, 3b., reads: “b. No other social or 3rd party actions may be attached to a Tweet”. I myself was worried about the implications of this in my piece on the changes yesterday.
Pocket was understandably concerned and reached out to Twitter and got clarification.
We’ve been told that the new API guidelines are not intended to affect or hamper your ability to integrate Pocket with Twitter apps or clients. The ‘social actions’ refer to Twitter’s own actions like Fav, RT, and Reply.
Pocket, Instapaper and other apps like Favstar integrate with many popular clients by offering a popup that asks people if they would like to ‘send this URL/item to Pocket’. Yesterday, it appeared that this behavior might be in jeopardy, but apparently not.
To be clear, only Pocket has contacted Twitter on this, but the behaviors of the two services in integrated apps like Tweetbot are nearly identical. This doesn’t adress other challenges for apps like Pocket and Instapaper, but it does seem to clarify that the ‘send to’ actions are safe for now.
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