Twitter unveils a new API platform, roadmap and vision for its developer community – TechCrunch (Apr 6, 2017)

Twitter has had a rocky and confusing relationship with developers over the years. Early on, it relied heavily on developers and encouraged them to build apps, but then it pulled back from that strategy and also made it harder for developers to create standard Twitter apps in competition with its own. And then it built and subsequently sold off a set of developer tools. So developers could be forgiven for being a little wary of another developer push from Twitter. But the moves Twitter announced today seem largely sensible and should move the company’s developer platform along nicely, aligning the mainstream REST and streaming APIs with its enterprise-grade GNIP APIs, and adding new functionality both today and through 2018 to improve and expand its offerings. All of that should make it easier for developers to build apps to hook into Twitter and take advantage of its data for a variety of purposes, as well as using Twitter as a customer service channel. That’s all good stuff, and if Twitter hasn’t alienated developers entirely, it should help rebuild that relationship over time too, with at least some of them.

via TechCrunch


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