But the alpha version was distributed as a free download on Tapbots’ website. Tweetbot for Mac will be a paid app available in the Apple App Store. After that, you can just hope that Twitter will raise that cap for your app - but there is no guarantee. With the version 1.1 of the Twitter API, a new controversial rule was implemented to supervise developers of third-party Twitter clients. Tapbots contacted Twitter to see if they could implement a workaround to prevent wasting user tokens during the free alpha test, but Twitter was intransigent. The third-party app currently offers a better user experience than Twitter’s own official app.

As Twitter limits an app’s user base to only 100,000 users, has fallen victim to the new API rules, albeit indirectly. Tapbots has announced on their blog that the alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac will no longer be available.