Twitter Developer Conference

Investments on mobility and monetization

Developers can access and manipulate Twitter's data through its API, which gradually allowed for an ecosystem to emerge around Twitter. With that, different tools and extra functionalities are invented daily by interested developers from around the world. That all led Twitter to promote its first official Developer Conference, called Chirp, that took place on San Francisco on April 14th and 15th


By GABRIELA ZAGO (gabriela.zago@wavemagazine.net)
from Porto Alegre, BRAZIL


Twitter, the microblogging tool created in 2006 as a side project from Odeo, a podcasting company, was initially conceived as a tool for sharing SMS messages between friends. It later turned into a more complex tool, in which updates could be sent and read through a variety of devices, like web, cell phones, or applications.

Developers can access and manipulate Twitter's data through its API, which gradually allowed for an ecosystem to emerge around Twitter. With that, different tools and extra functionalities are invented daily by interested developers from around the world. And those new tools are then appropriated by Twitter users.

That all led Twitter to promote its first official Developer Conference, called Chirp, that took place in San Francisco on April 14th and 15th. At Chirp, Twitter announced its plans for mobile and monetization.

Mobile

Twitter was since the beginning tied to mobile access. Originally, people could send and receive tweets through SMS. After some while, however, its original international number for sending and receiving SMS updates became available only in certain countries, and since then Twitter had practically no official channels for mobile access.

But lately Twitter appears to be reinvesting on mobile facilities. It launched local Trending Topics, and some while after, announced a project called @anywhere, for geolocated tweets.

Its most recent investment, announced on Chirp, is developing and/or acquiring Twitter apps for cell phone access - specially for iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones.

Although all this investment might be seen for some as a positive thing, it may not be so good for those other app developers who depend on its applications revenue in order to profit. If Twitter launches an official Twitter application for iPhone for free, for example, what will happen with the several other apps for the same purpose already available on the App Store? As BBC Newspointed out, "Developers have been growing increasingly uneasy as Twitter creates its own version of programs previously provided by third parties and buy ups firms behind hot applications."

On the conference, Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder, justified the company's attitude by saying that - "We have to have a core experience on the major platforms just like we have on the web or else we are failing users and failing the ecosystem".

Monetization

One question that intrigues much people around the world is how it would be possible to Twitter to profit from the tool. So, it was no surprise that another central topic of the developer conference was Twitter plans for advertising. One of the plans involves what was called "promoted tweets". By this advertising model, Twitter would split the revenue with the company that announces on Twitter. Promoted tweets would be placed on Twitter timeline, among tweets made by a user's friends.

Another strategy would be paid commercial accounts for businesses, something that, as stated on the conference, is already being tested with some companies.




(Published: 10.05.2010.)