Twitter Opens Developers Labs Program To Test New API Products (venturebeat.com) 20
"Twitter is upgrading its API to be more standards-compliant and more modern," writes longtime Slashdot reader andyp. "They also want to collaborate with developers as they create the new API platform." VentureBeat provides more details: Twitter today announced plans to build "the next generation of the Twitter API" that will provide more flexibility and better serve developers. As a first step, the company is launching the Twitter Developer Labs program to let developers preview new features and test new API products before they are finalized. Participating developers will be asked to provide feedback on what they like and don't like ahead of the broad rollout. Twitter announced Twitter API version 1.1 in August 2012. The social network and what developers use it for have changed a lot since then. Twitter has added enterprise data APIs and the Ads API, but the main API has largely stagnated. At the same time, Twitter has burned developers again and again. The first new features that will be released in Labs are GET /tweets and GET /users. After that, Twitter will release new versions of functionality to filter and search tweets, and to get tweet engagement and impression metrics.
If you'd like to participate in Labs, Twitter says you must follow these steps:
1. Visit the Labs page and sign up to receive updates.
2.Create a developer account (if you haven't yet). Access to Labs will require a developer account, even if you have an active app created through the former apps.twitter.com website.
3.Review the Labs documentation to learn more about what's coming (and follow @TwitterDev).
4. Share feedback.
If you'd like to participate in Labs, Twitter says you must follow these steps:
1. Visit the Labs page and sign up to receive updates.
2.Create a developer account (if you haven't yet). Access to Labs will require a developer account, even if you have an active app created through the former apps.twitter.com website.
3.Review the Labs documentation to learn more about what's coming (and follow @TwitterDev).
4. Share feedback.
Re: (Score:3)
Wouldn't Trust Them (Score:5, Informative)
I had a web application I wrote once using the Twitter API. (I allowed you to more easily manage your followers.) Shortly after I wrote it, Twitter began imposing harsh usage limits on their APIs. You could only do so many calls per day and it was set so low that even my little web application was affected. Basically, they wanted to keep saying they had an open API, but wanted users to flock to them instead of the third party tools. I've given up coding for Twitter's API. There was a lesson there that coding on a platform that someone else owns means that your code can be rendered useless at any given moment.
Re: (Score:3)
This and Twitter's requirement to keep the OAuth "client secret" string (called "consumer secret" in some spec revisions) a secret. The trouble is that authenticating a client using a client secret really only works when an app runs on a web server [slashdot.org]. In a desktop or mobile application, you can't keep a secret from someone with a debugger. So you have to either pay for a server through which to proxy all API calls issued by your application's users [stackoverflow.com] or require each user to register as a developer [google.com] in order to o
Re: (Score:1)
We have an alternative that has a real open [fediverse.network] API and millions of users - the [instances.social] fediverse [fediverse.party]. There is no sense going back to twitter and its centralization and censorship.
Translated Headline (Score:2)
Translated Headline: "Twitter Sucks Up Free Labor To Test New API Products"
Let me guess (Score:2)
Will the new API will push the Twitter algorithm for what to show you instead of the current API which can be used to still get an actual chronological timeline of just who/what you follow?