Falcon Pro developer Joaquim Vergès is in a tight spot. His popular Android twitter client is booming, but he has hit the dreaded 100,000 Twitter token limit. Twitter set this limit last year to discourage developers from creating twitter clients that are too similar to its own clients.
Vergès has petitioned Twitter to boost his token limit so he can add more customers, but his pleas have all been rejected by the powers that be at the social network. His app, they say, is basically a clone of Twitter’s own client and does not add any value to the service.
As a result, Vergès was forced to take an extreme measure to get people to stop buying Falcon Pro. He was concerned that new customers would pay for the app and not be able to authenticate it with Twitter because he had run out of tokens. Rather than pull the app, which would affect customers who already bought it, Vergès decided to price Falcon at a price so exorbitant ($132) that people wouldn’t buy it.
Part of the problem facing Jorges is not an overabundance of new customers alone (though he does have that), he is also facing a growing number of pirates who are using valuable Twitter tokens without paying for the app. Each pirate using a Twitter ID token is taking one away from a paying customer.
Though the long-term prospects for Falcon Pro are grim without an increase in its token limit, the developer did solve his immediate problem of booting out pirates. The dev released a new version of the app and reset the Twitter ID tokens. Customers who already own Falcon Pro will need to re-login to claim a token and new customers can secure a token by purchasing the app at its now $1.96 price tag. Those who pirated the app and sideloaded it to their device are warned that their old app keys will stop working in the next 24-48 hours.
[Via Android Authority and Google+]