An Urgent Message about Twitter and Websites from JGPR

Dear Clients and Media Friends,

We need to have a long overdue talk about Twitter.

In April, WordPress/Jetpack announced that Twitter suddenly blocked access to its platform, leaving millions of website users — including JGPR.net and our clients — suddenly unable to automatically broadcast web/blog content to one of the top social networks in the world.

The service came back for a bit, still with no explanation from Twitter. But then on May 18, Automattic, the company behind WordPress, announced that Twitter had permanently shut off access to its service.

Earlier this month, the sudden appearance of rate limiting on Twitter further degraded access to the platform, effectively killing the long-beloved TweetDeck platform which PIOs have relied on for more than a decade.

Since the initial announcement in April, JGPR staff had been working diligently to find a way to automatically broadcast website content to Twitter. We have tested more than half a dozen services and plugins with varying degrees of success — and every time we find a solution, Twitter suddenly and inexplicably changes things up again.

Most recently, we were convinced that we had finally found a permanent solution. Just last week, we began to migrate our clients to dlvr.it, a premium service that would require a significant investment from us. Then, tonight, dlvr.it announced just after 6 p.m. Eastern Time that Twitter had, indeed, cut that platform off as well.

We still plan to move forward with dlvr.it as a social media service over WordPress Jetpack, because it has promised auto-posting from the JGPR website and client websites to Facebook pages, Facebook groups (for the first time), Instagram, LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn company pages, Mastodon and, soon, Threads.  It will also use less server resources than the Jetpack plugin, as dlvr.it runs on its own website, and Jetpack runs natively as a plugin on our servers. 

Since our founding 10 years ago, Twitter has been the number one way that members of the news media obtain news from our clients. It has generally been faster and more reliable than even email. That time is over.  JGPR and our clients’ news can also be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and, now, Threads. 

Of course, while auto-posting is gone, we will continue to use Twitter manually, especially for breaking news, but as you will read below, we proceed on Twitter with caution. 

This is by no means a problem that is unique to JGPR, but our police, fire, government and school clients suffer disproportionally by Twitter’s instability.

At this time, we need to announce the following: 

• Twitter auto-posting from websites is suspended indefinitely, and the media and our clients should assume that it will not be restored. 
• We will continue to look for or attempt to build solutions to the problem of Twitter auto-broadcasting.
• Twitter aggregation services like TweetDeck should not be relied on for access to/viewing Tweets. PIOs not paying for Twitter Blue or who have not obtained Twitter Gray should assume that they will be rate limited — and lose access to viewing Twitter for stretches — if they try to use Twitter during a critical incident. This is a potential public safety disaster if you are over-relying on Twitter. 
• We are, at this time, considering what future value Twitter holds for our clients. This is important: For the first time, JGPR is advising its clients that Twitter has faded from reliability, is fading from relevance and could fade from existence. JGPR has long taught its clients not to depend on one single platform for all of your public information needs. Today is a prime example of that philosophy in action. 
• Twitter is no longer a reliable source of emergency public information. The combination of rate limiting and API/access restriction means that (A) Public information officers may not be able to access or use Twitter when they need it most and (B) Members of the public may be blocked/rate limited from seeing vital public safety information over Twitter. 
• We continue to investigate Meta/Instagram’s new Threads social media service. While it is too soon to tell if it will replace Twitter, at last check it had already picked up more than 100 million users. Admittedly, most of its users are existing Instagram users. Time will tell on that one.
• For clients, your website, email platforms, the news media/press releases, emergency/reverse 911 systems (when necessary) and IPAWS (as prescribed by policy) should remain your primary methods of distributing public safety news, and you should be telling your constituents this information.
• Facebook remains a vital and relevant social media tool for government agencies and public safety — for now.  But it was not too long ago that we were pondering Facebook’s possible decline. Far too many public safety agencies still over-rely on Facebook. If this Twitter mess teaches us one thing, it is that we shouldn’t over-rely on a service we don’t own. Today we’re talking about Twitter. Tomorrow we could just as easily be talking about Facebook’s decline, a TikTok ban or a Threads emergence.

As a communications agency dedicated to government and public safety, we remain ready and willing to assist with messaging and public information needs at all times. While we are angry and disappointed in the sudden decline of Twitter, we must always be ready to march forward.

We held out hope for a long time that Twitter would right the ship, but our faith in Twitter’s future has begun to diminish.

Stay safe,

John Guilfoil, Founder and Principal Owner

JGPR