Twitter cancels its Chirp developer conference during management, company transition said late Thursday. The conference was scheduled to take place in San Francisco on November 16. After Elon Musk took over the company last month, there have been several board exits and changes in direction in the company’s product strategy. So it’s not surprising that the social network is giving up on its plan for the conference’s return after more than a decade of hiatus.
In a tweet, Twitter’s official account for developer-related announcements said the company is “working hard to make Twitter better for everyone, including developers” and that it could share some news on the subject soon.
The company’s head of developer products, Amir Shevat, gave no details about the reason behind the cancellation of the conference and simply tweeted “Winds of change” in response.
In June, Parag Agarwal-led Twitter announced it was bringing the Chirp conference back in November. The company also opened a contest for developers to showcase creative use cases of its new v2 API with prizes such as $10,000 for winners of various categories and free access to the enterprise-level API for a year. It said that although the conference will no longer take place, the social network will still announce the winners of the competition.
Twitter first held Chirp in 2010, but canceled the event the following year. While the platform has had a shaky relationship with developers over the past decade, it has tried to win back the community with new programs and a revamped API. In addition, the company opened API access to academic researchers last year.
Earlier this year, it debuted a program called Twitter Toolbox, which highlighted some third-party apps. At the time, Shevat also said the company was open to exploring models such as Twitter’s own app store.
Twitter opened last week new endpoints to forward messages via the v2 API that allows third-party apps to provide users with a better DM experience.
It’s unclear what Twitter will look like for developers in the Musk era. Tesla’s CEO has hinted at tech-led Twitter multiple times, so developers will hope they get better access to the company’s tools.
There will be questions about what happens to products like Tweetdeck. The company started testing a new version last year in hopes of turning it into a paid product. Earlier this year, findings from app researcher Jane Manchun Wong suggested that Twitter might allow access to Tweetdeck through its Twitter Blue program. But since Musk is overhauling the subscription program in a massive way, there’s no way to be sure Tweetdeck will have a place there.