Twitter looks to lure in developers with new mobile SDK

Steven Loeb · October 22, 2014 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/39ea

Twitter also debuts Digits, which replaces passwords with phone numbers

As with every social network, Twitter's future depends on getting both users, and advertisers, onto mobile. And that future will depend on giving developers a reason to build apps onto Twitter's platform. 

That is why the company has introduced Fabric, a new set of APIs that are aimed at making it easier for developers to create apps on the platform, which was revealed at Flight, its first ever mobile developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. 

In a blog post, Twitter called Fabric "a modular mobile platform that makes it easy for developers to build great apps." 

"The Fabric platform is made of three modular kits that address some of the most common and pervasive challenges that all app developers face: stability, distribution, revenue and identity," the company said.

  • The first kit addressed stability, and is called Crashlytics. It helps developers find out why their app crashed, how many of their users are affected, what the conditions were and where to look. Finding out this information "is vital to the success of your app. But it can be a frustrating and complicated process," Twitter said. 

The Kit combines Crashlytics, Beta (which helps developers get feedback on their app before it ships) and Answers (which offers real-time, optimized app analytics).

  • To help with distribution, the company is introducing the Twitter Kit, which includes Native Tweet embeds, Tweet composer, and Sign-in With Twitter.

"Getting noticed is often as difficult as getting a high-quality app shipped. Between iOS and Android, there are over two million apps available," the company wrote. "With that in mind, we’re announcing the Twitter Kit, which includes three new products to help you tap into Twitter to get the growth you want."

  • Finally, there is the MoPub Kit, which "makes it simple to integrate ads into your apps with just a few clicks."

It serves ads directly to developers from advertisers, lets them work with multiple ad networks, and tap into thousands of high-quality advertisers, who will then compete for their app against other ad partners on MoPub’s exchange. It supports all major ad formats including banners, interstitials, video and native ads.

  • Another part of the Twitter Kit that was also announced at the conference was Digits, which gives developers a way to allow users to sign in to their apps and websites without them having to use a password. 

To login, users just have to use their phones number in order to get a confirmation code. Users can manage their Digits accounts online, and enable two-factor authentication.

Twitter also revealed Digits Web APIs, which makes it easier to integrate Digits into websites, and "Friend Finding with Digits," which enabled users to find other Digits users in your apps that they know by using their address book. 

Twitter reversal

All of this is big reversal from the decision that Twitter made a couple of years ago to update its API to limit third-party apps on the site. The idea, the company said at the time, was “to ensure that Twitter users have a consistent experience wherever they see and interact with Tweets.”

But now Twitter is openly embracing third-party developers. So what fostered this change? Well, since that time the company went public and has also seen significant growth on mobile.

In the most recent quarter, Twitter saw mobile monthly average users increase 29% year to year, and 7% quarter to quarter, to 211 million. Mobile MAUs represented 78% of the company's total MAUs.

Obviously Twitter needs to capitalize on that, and it wasn't going to get anywhere by shunning and angering the developer community.

(Image source: blog.twitter.com)

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.