{"id":5780,"date":"2011-07-30T10:18:33","date_gmt":"2011-07-30T18:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perivision.net\/wordpress\/?p=5780"},"modified":"2011-08-24T15:24:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T23:24:00","slug":"topify-is-now-gone-is-there-a-reason-to-use-to-the-twitter-api-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.perivision.net\/wordpress\/2011\/07\/topify-is-now-gone-is-there-a-reason-to-use-to-the-twitter-api-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Topify is now gone. Is there a reason to use to the Twitter API anymore?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Another one bits the dust.\u00a0 Topify<\/a>, a service that makes working with twitter and email much better decided to not to deal with the latest changes to the Twitter API.\u00a0 And I can understand some what because one of the services of TwittFilter <\/a>( developed by Yours Truly)\u00a0 has a similar service where it will send you an email when you get a mention or direct message. \"\"<\/a>In my case, I still prefer my system since it does unread messages, not all, as well as blocks spam.\u00a0 But I will admit, over the last few changes with the API in the past year and the expansion of Twitter services, I have been on the fence many times. The only thing that keep me updating my many twitter apps is in the fact that I still prefer my own program Twitter and second, its a hobby program, so I do not HAVE to respond same day if something breaks.<\/p>\n

So when I found out about Topify decided not to update to the latest changes at Twitter, I was sympathetic.\u00a0 And this I started to wonder.\u00a0 Is there any reason to keep writing things on the Twitter API?\u00a0 Yes and No.\u00a0 Depends on what you are trying to do.<\/p>\n

If you are trying to build something that is somewhat core, overlapping anything that the site can do, I would just stop now. Think about any service you are offering that would have have mass appeal, or fixes a failure on Twitter’s side that you know could be fixed if they just stepped up.\u00a0 Just walk away.\u00a0 This would fit in to the advice that Twitter gave to developers to stop building clients that just access Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, if you are building very specific things, as I do, that have a feature or approach that is not complimentary to a logical next step for twitter to build, then you may want to keep it running.\u00a0 For example, most of what I write is never seen. I tend to write a lot of very simple bots that do simple special jobs. Things a company like Twitter would find distracting because its not part of their core offering.<\/p>\n

And if you think the rate of new apps would be slowing down since the latest changes in Twitter, you would be wrong.\u00a0 On July 11, 2011, Twitter crossed the 1 million apps line.\u00a0 From the Twitter blog.<\/p>\n

As an ecosystem, we\u2019ve just crossed one million registered applications, built by more than 750,000 developers around the world. This is up from 150,000 apps just a year ago. \u00a0A new app is registered every 1.5 seconds, fueling a spike in ecosystem growth in the areas of analytics, curation and publisher tools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now many of the changes that have really missed off developers have only been on the last few months, so who knows what the numbers will be in the 4th Quarter, but clearly, there are plenty of people out with idea and needs for interacting with Twitter that is not covered by the current system and important enough to keep up with the changes in the Twitter eco system.\u00a0 And we should take these numbers with a grain of salt. How many of these million apps are still being used much less being updated to reflect changes with the API?<\/p>\n

Twitter has also been investing and improving its developers pages. The new pages are much cleaner and as I’m told by my friends at Twitter, the API docs are more accurate.<\/p>\n