Reflections on Chirp

oneforty traveled to San Francisco last week to attend Chirp, the first official Twitter developers conference. The overarching takeaway that struck all of us was that the Twitter ecosystem is entering a new era, and it will bring changes both to Twitter and its developer community.

Twitter has grown a lot over the past year, not only in users but also in personnel and infrastructure. The company has four times as many employees as it did one year ago, and it has handled a massive influx of traffic while sustaining much lower error rates. As many speakers put it, the “painful time” of constant failwhales has passed, and we are now seeing a renewed focus on product development and user acquisition. This new era is marked by several significant announcements.

The first was @anywhere, which vastly reduces the barrier to entry to build a Twitter-enabled web site. @anywhere provides code that web developers can copy and paste to allow their visitors to follow users, unfollow users and even sign up for Twitter, all without ever leaving their web site. Web developers who know jQuery can do much more with it, as they now have access to the entire Twitter API without having to write a single line of server-side code.

Ultimately, @anywhere will distinguish “integration apps” from “innovation” apps. Any web developer can now build site that maps a text box to a Twitter API call. Such integrations will soon be commoditized. For Twitter, this is great news. It widens the company’s user acquisition funnel while enabling more sources to provide data (tweets). For developers, this is a prod to be innovative and build new functionality on top of Twitter’s API. Twitter has made it super easy to build a reference implementation of a Twitter app/client, with the hope that developers can now focus on building new and innovative features.

Twitter’s announcement of Annotations is a great starting point for this, as they establish a framework that developers can use to extend the functionality of tweets. By opting not to structure or restrict the use of this data, Twitter has left the implementation details in the hands of developers. Some Twitter API developers have already set up a Google Group to discuss how to standardize the use of this feature when it is eventually released.

User Streams are sure to please every Twitter developer who has struggled while constantly polling the Twitter API. They provide a real time feed of a user’s timeline and activities. Apps can now poll updates for users in real time without ever having to worry about rate limitations.

Finally, Promoted Tweets provides a revenue model, not only for Twitter but also for third party developers. Any client application that displays tweets can participate in the Promoted Tweets program, which will provide a 50/50 net revenue split between Twitter and the participating developer. This will enable apps to attain revenues without having to resort to conventional advertising or requiring direct payments from users. Timing and pricing details have not yet been determined. An important point that many articles are failing to cover: developers are not required to display Promoted Tweets in their apps.

The announcements at Chirp reflect Twitter’s growth and ability to adapt to evolving business needs. The company has its eyes set on acquiring users and increasing their engagement, and it’s relying on hardworking developers to create a new breed of innovative apps that will make the service even more useful to its user base.

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