Last week we had a nice little surprise with the Twitter beta app leaking. The app is optimized for Windows Phone 8.1 and includes the Social Extensibility framework, which I detailed recently. If you use Twitter and 8.1, the app is pretty fantastic due to the ability to use the Share picker and the deeper integration with the OS.
Unfortunately, the beta was meant to be private, meaning none of you were supposed to have access to that link. This is also why we were unsurprised when the app disappeared from the Store just a few hours after being covered by tech sites.
Now, there seems to be another step being taken: the app is being disabled for some users. We should clarify that this is not Microsoft revoking the app, which results in a pop-up message noting such an occurrence and the app literally being uninstalled from your phone. But rather, this is evidently a check to see if those of you who have it, are also on the beta list.
A few users have described the app Tile being "grayed out" and that it no longer opens, including users in our forums and in ‘tips’ sent in. A user named ‘calebkeith’ on Reddit goes on to explain the process:
“They placed a flag on their store's servers that says if you aren't part of the beta, you can no longer open this app because it is restricted to a specific list of people. Your apps synced, and got the notification that it was flagged at the server. The OS then disabled the app.”
To be honest, we’re unsure of how that whole process works as we don’t recall a situation like this in the past. Even the WhatsApp beta didn’t do that when it was accidently leaked as well (and no, we don’t know when the update is coming, so please don’t ask).
Regardless, if you have had the Twitter beta Tile grayed out and experienced a similar issue, that’s the reason. For now, it seems like the vast majority of you still have it working, as we haven’t had a flood of complaints yet.
Let us know in comments if your Twitter beta for Windows Phone 8.1 is still working or not!
