Need a Developer Account for third Twitter account used by our Academic campuses via REST API

[TAMUCMAdmin]

Hello Twitter,
Here at Texas A&M University, we have several campuses across the state of Texas, USA. Three of our campuses share an emergency notification system for campus emergencies. We have a separate twitter account for each campus. The accounts are used solely to send tweets during emergencies with a separate Twitter app for each campus using the REST APIs. We’ve obtained Developer account approvals for two of the three campus twitter accounts. The third Twitter account was denied a Developer account.
How can we resubmit a Developer Account application for the third Twitter account?

Thank you.

[IgorBrigadir]

I guess someone from twitter staff will chime in, but from what i know - it sounds like you should have 1 single application for these emergency alerts, and 3 separate accounts that use it - eg: Your Admin account may own the app and have 1 developer account, and each campus authenticates using the same app, and the app would use separate access tokens for each account to tweets alerts.

Since it’s emergency alerts, i’m also wondering if it’s possible to get something like https://twitter.com/SYFR - there’s a special alert box like:

" In times of crisis, this account helps share critical information with Twitter Alerts. Be prepared https://twitter.com/SYFR/alerts "

with a link to alerts for the account.

That looks like what you ideally need - but again, only someone from Twitter can point you towards how to get that, bit more on it here: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-use-twitter-alerts

[hmz]

Hi @TAMUCMAdmin. All of our developer applications are reviewed to ensure compliance with Twitter policy. While we can’t comment on specific cases, applications may be rejected if they are found to be in violation of any section of the Developer Agreement and Policy, Automation Rules, Display Requirements, and/or the Twitter Rules.

There currently isn’t a way to edit a rejected application, or to re-apply, however stay informed for product updates/changes.

Might I suggest using an organization account in the future, and inviting team members/users to join, so all of the campus accounts fall under a single organization umbrella? If you do it this way, you’d only need to apply for one developer account.

If you need to post to each account from a single app, you can do this by setting up 3-legged-OAuth to post on behalf of the user.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

[TAMUCMAdmin]

Hello Twitter Staff. Thank you very much for your previous response and recommendations. We do have a few questions that you can help us with:

1. We submitted a Developer Account application for each of the University’s emergency alerting Twitter accounts. All but one of our applications were accepted; one was denied. Each of our applications contained the same basic use case and behavior description. Each of our Twitter accounts is used to tweet emergency alert messages for a different campus of the university. Each campus is located in a different geographic region of the State of Texas. Those wanting to receive the tweeted messages about a specific campus simply follow the Twitter account associated with that campus. Each Twitter account displays only the alert messages for that campus and helps ensure the followers receive the important information only for that campus. Since each developer account has the same basic use case and behavior description and the associated Twitter accounts server to inform a different set of followers, we do not understand why one of our four developer applications would be denied. Is there anything you can tell us that will help us understand why the application was denied?

2. Currently, we can manage the existing app for each of our Twitter accounts. And we understand that Twitter will eventually require we have a developer account in order to manage existing apps for each Twitter account. Can you provide any information for how we re-apply for the one account that Twitter denied?

3. Your recommendation to use an Organizational Account in the future for all of of our API apps is interesting. Can you provide links to documentation that describes how we could use the Organizational account in that way? Again, having the tweets from a distinct campus available for followers is critically important to us, we don’t want tweets from multiple campuses appearing in one feed to all followers.

Thank you for helping us with these concerns for our Twitter followers.

[IgorBrigadir]

The “one account approved, rest denied” thing makes sense from the point of view that 1 application should be registered for “a single purpose”: Policy clarification - multiple applications for the same use case

The new developer dashboard can now manage old apps (ones you previously registered on apps.twitter.com) https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps so it shouldn’t be a problem.

For 3. This is generally how it could work:

Lets say @TAMUCMAdmin is a twitter account you operate, and is an approved developer account. You then either register a new app called “Alert System”, or use an existing one that works, and use the Consumer Key & Secret of the app to “authenticate” each of your campus accounts, eg: @Campus1Alerts, @Campus2Alerts, @Campus3Alerts @CampusAlertsDevTesting etc…

You can use something like https://github.com/twitter/twurl to do the OAuth thing manually once for each account, the tokens are long lived and won’t expire unless you reset them. (It does it this way if i remember correctly: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/authentication/overview/pin-based-oauth )

Now to tweet alerts for separate campuses, each account now has the same Consumer Key & secret, but their own unique Access Token & Secret. Everything else in your system should be exactly as before - except now you only use 1 main application key instead of separate ones for each campus.

Also, it doesn’t really matter which account owns the app, what matters is the combination of Consumer key & secret and Access token & secret - so @Campus1Alerts could be the actual Application “owner” but the other accounts will still have their own access tokens and tweet separately just fine.

Hope that helps!

[LeBraat]

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you @IgorBrigadir !

@TAMUCMAdmin - Please let me know if you have any additional questions.