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Twitter's API guidelines claim another victim: News.me

The social news aggregator that bought Digg announces it is dropping its iPhone and iPad apps and points the blame at Twitter.

Dara Kerr Former senior reporter
Dara Kerr was a senior reporter for CNET covering the on-demand economy and tech culture. She grew up in Colorado, went to school in New York City and can never remember how to pronounce gif.
Dara Kerr
2 min read

News.me, the social news service that bought and revived Digg in July, announced today that it was ditching its iPhone and iPad apps.

These apps bring users curated news links from throughout the day and present them in a Twitter-like format. The only problem is the display may not be Twitter-like enough.

According to News.me's Jake Levine, the reason they're shutting down the apps is because Twitter's new API guidelines make it difficult for the company to meet the new Display Requirements. Apparently, Twitter's guidelines require News.me to look a little more like Twitter.

Here's more that Levine wrote in a blog post today:

When Twitter rolled out its latest API guidelines, the News.me apps were deemed to be in violation of the new Display Requirements. We had a decision to make: invest meaningful resources in the News.me apps to meet the new Requirements, or pull the apps from the App Store.

Here's what it comes down to: we don't want to invest time and energy into an application that competes with a platform on which it relies.

When Twitter upped its API restrictions, many complained that it was alienating the developers who helped to make the microblogging service such a success. The new restrictions made it tougher for third-party apps to grow their user base because of changes like a cap on the number of users an app can have and required authentication to access the application programming interface.

Now with News.me's iOS apps left in the past, Levine said the company will focus on Digg. When News.me bought Digg in July, it realigned the site's goals -- completely making over the ailing news aggregator, streamlining its home page, and adding in Facebook and Twitter integration.

According to Levine, more than 4 million people have visited Digg in the past three months, and the company plans for this number to grow.

"We're sending millions of visits every week to great sites around the Web and we're happy to see that once again Digg is a leading referrer on charts like this," he wrote.

Those users who already downloaded the iOS apps will continue to have News.me support. Also, News.me e-mail will continue for all existing and new users.