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Twitter expands its new API with conversation and reply controls

As reported in July, Twitter announced the second generation of its official API to bring more features to third-party Twitter clients. The company announced today that the Twitter v2 API is getting its first expansion with conversation and reply controls.

According to TechCrunch, the new API will soon offer new endpoints that enable more Twitter features for developers creating third-party Twitter clients. One of these features is the option to limit who can reply to your tweets, which was introduced to users in May.

On Twitter, users can opt to allow everyone to reply, or they can limit replies only to those they follow or even just the people mentioned in the tweet. These conversation controls are now partially supported in the new API as well, through a field in the Tweet object called reply_settings. The addition will allow developers to tell if the conversation reply settings have been set for a tweet, and if so, who can reply.

Another feature that is coming back to the Twitter API is the filtering of tweets from specific users or mentioning specific accounts, as well as for collecting tweets during a certain time period. Twitter told TechCrunch that these were two of the most used endpoints by developers in the past.

However, there will be some limitations to using the new endpoints with the Twitter v2 API. Developers can retrieve up to 100 tweets per request, while the “user tweet timeline endpoint is limited to the 3,200 most recent tweets, and the user mention timeline is limited to the 800 most recent tweets.

Developers can access the Twitter website to learn more about the new API and also sign up for the beta program. Twitter will expand the API in early 2021 and interested developers can already request access to it for business purposes. With these improvements, it’s likely that third-party Twitter clients will be able to once again offer the same features as the official Twitter app and website.

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Avatar for Filipe Espósito Filipe Espósito

Filipe Espósito is a Brazilian tech Journalist who started covering Apple news on iHelp BR with some exclusive scoops — including the reveal of the new Apple Watch Series 5 models in titanium and ceramic. He joined 9to5Mac to share even more tech news around the world.