As promised, Twitter has officially released their new API guidelines, and is telling developers they have until March to comply – or get cut off.

Twitter made the unofficial-official announcement of the upcoming API changes in mid-August on their developer blog, and this week they shared the full details with the developer community.

The new guidelines mean that some developers will have a harder time accessing tweets and other information from Twitter, but the company says that most developers who have created experiences that augment Twitter will actually have more freedom.

And, likely in response to some negative feedback from developers, Twitter clarified their stance on user token limits, which set a ceiling for the total number of users an app can have.

Those who create experiences similar to Twitter’s own, such as third-party clients, won’t fare well under the new guidelines. If they’re not sending traffic back to Twitter.com, they’ll be hit with a 100,000 user limit. However, the company explained that most other app developers won’t be affected by this new rule.

The user limit has already affected popular Twitter app Tweetbot, which was temporarily shut down and has now stopped accepting new users.

Developers have six months to comply with the new API.

The entire API 1.1 document outlining the new developer rule can be found here.

(Rule books image via Shutterstock)