Twitter Retires Magic Recs When Bots Are On The Rise

Ingrid Lunden:

At a time when Twitter is looking for catchy things to capture more audience, it’s ironic that Magic Recs bot would stop working just as bots were starting to become a thing.

Doubly ironic is the fact that Magic Recs was a bot that actually worked when some have flopped. Like many others who followed it, I praised Magic Recs for being uncannily accurate in predicting interesting accounts to follow and tweets to watch. Twitter could have turned it into something that people could even pull for more Recs.

While push notifications may work out, the people using third-party Twitter clients will miss out on them. And I refuse to use the native client when it’s as bad as it is. Why not leave Magic Recs for hardcore users? While I don’t think much of the bots which seem to be popping up in many places recently, this was one that I really enjoyed.