North America's largest transportation network, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in NYC, has
stopped posting
service alerts and updates on Twitter, citing reliability issues.
The MTA offers a subway system, buses, commuter railroads, and more to 15.3 million people across a 5,000 square-mile area in and around New York City, Long Island, New York State, and Connecticut.
-
Bloomberg reports that the MTA made the move because Twitter asked it to pay
$50,000 per month
to access the platform's application programming interface or API.
-
While Twitter's former API was free, the company has shifted to a paid-tiered system, with can cost
tens of thousands
of dollars
for enterprise customers.
- As well, the MTA said its access to Twitter through its API was involuntarily interrupted twice in the past two weeks.
- The agency will no longer push out real-time service updates on @NYCTSubway, @NYCTBus, and other accounts, though users can still tweet at those handles if they have questions and requests.
- The @MTA app will still remain active for other types of messaging.
- Instead of Twitter, the MTA is now directing users to its official website, MYmta and TrainTime apps, as well as email and text for service alerts.
