The thing is, if you look at the new terms of service, they aren't prohibiting new clients, nor are they shutting down old ones without cause. They just think that this particular niche is already filled, and suggesting that developers pursue other areas. It's perhaps not the friendliest thing to do, but I don't see it as a kick in the teeth.
If you ask me, that's actually worse. Why such ambiguity? It is pretty apparent Twitter is no fan of clients because of revenue reasons. They will do all of us a service by clearly acknowledging that and simply banning apps of specific nature.
It would sting, sure, but I'd respect a company openly stating financial realities versus a company giving developers a runaround.
Yeah, I keep reading the post, looking for "no new clients" statement that is in OP's headline, and not finding it. I read it as you do; they suggest there's not a whole lot of opportunity in building more clients, but it doesn't read like they'd deny you an API key for it.
Why not let the market decide this though? If someone wants to make a new client because they either see a profit there or have some new ideas I don't think they should be telling them not to.
This highlights an interesting loophole in the libertarian "magic markets" theory: a truly free market includes the right to create closed, authoritarian ecosystems, such as the App Store, or the downloadable game markets on all three major consoles.
Sometimes the model turns out to be inefficient and unsustainable, and such companies are crushed by more open competitors, but not always.
