Twitter has a novel idea for how to win back the trust of developers: It will allow them to build on the platform itself and then promote their tools and services directly to users on Twitter at key moments.
The company is launching an experiment today in what may be one of the most significant efforts in recent years — aside from rolling out a rebuilt Twitter API, of course — to show it works with developers and better responds to their needs intention of. With the new test, Twitter said it will promote apps from select developers directly on its platform as they may be useful to end users.
The experiment will start small, highlighting Twitter’s recently launched “Twitter Toolbox Collection Off-the-shelf services, especially in the realm of developer-built security tools, include Block Party, Bodyguard, and Moderate. Beta tests are only visible to selected users.
When Twitter users use Twitter’s built-in tools to block or mute someone through the web app, they’ll see a new, non-intrusive prompt for various third-party services that offer a higher level of security and protection.
twitter first introduced this Twitter Toolbox in February.
Currently, Toolbox is an online hub that provides ready-to-use self-service applications and services built by Twitter’s developer community and available to the public. In addition to the three security tools, today’s toolbox includes scheduling applications Chirr App and Buffer; a thread reader application; and measurement tools ilo, Blackmagic.so, Direcon Inc., Followerwonk, and Tweepsmap.
Let the new Twitter Toolbox work for you. These low-cost, ready-to-use tools were built by our developer community to help you get more out of Twitter.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 1, 2022
Twitter said the idea to feature the Toolbox app on its platform came from discussions with the developer community. The developers told the company that they wanted to improve the user experience on Twitter and, more importantly, they wanted to distribute it so people could learn about their product.
“This is the first step in our work with developers to actually meet these needs,” explained Twitter’s developer platform product lead, Amir Shevat, who came to the company through the 2021 Reshuffle acquisition after holding similar roles at Twitch, Slack, Google and Microsoft.
“[Developers] We want users, and we want to give them the right users at the right time — providing value to the Twitter users who need innovation from these developers right now, and distribution to those developers,” he said.
Image Source: Twitter
By showing prompts only when user intent is strongest — in this case, when a user has blocked or muted an account — Twitter hopes users will show an increased willingness to interact with the developer’s app. For developers like Block Party who currently gain users through word-of-mouth recommendations, the ability to gain users on Twitter itself could have a huge impact on their business.
“We’re excited to have the opportunity to reach users who will really benefit from what we’re doing,” said Block Party founder and CEO Tracy Chou. “In this way, we can more directly reach people who need this kind of tools.”
Bodyguard founder and CEO Charles Cohen already expects his business to grow significantly with the results of the new test.
“We currently estimate that 25 percent of users who install Bodyguard are from the Twitter Toolbox site, and we expect that number to rise to 50 percent in the next few days,” he said. “We’re also excited about this new experiment, which will bring Bodyguard to Twitter users who need immediate, free, real-time, customizable and high-quality protection against toxic content targeting them on social media.”
Twitter’s Olive Branch to Developers
While Twitter has worked with its developer community in its more open capacity over the years, it still has a lot of history to overcome to fully reset its developer relationships. Repairing its reputation will be no small effort.
In the early years, Twitter’s attitude toward developers was disorganized and constantly changing. It hosted its first developer conference, Chirp, in 2010, and expects it to continue to engage directly with those building with its API and developer tools for years to come. The following year, the event was canceled, and there was no return.
In 2012, Twitter got off the feet of developers who had been building third-party Twitter clients, and a few years later got its own partners to agree to resell Twitter’s firehose data — an unfiltered stream of full tweets and their metadata. — After the 2014 acquisition of partner rival Gnip.
And, as some have suggested, Twitter isn’t always honest about the reasons behind its API changes. A recent Twitter post by early Twitter employee Evan Henshaw-Plath (@rabble) explained that Twitter’s decision to restrict third-party customers was actually due to the competitive threat from UberMedia, which has been acquiring customers with the aim of moving users to its own microblogging service.
Henshaw-Plath laments: “Twitter thought the open ecosystem was going to be taken, so they closed the ecosystem to save the company. I hope they work with app developers, [been] Honestly an attack on the company…”
Twitter is important, but as a company it has always been vulnerable. When Twitter does something that upsets the user community, it’s usually because of this bug.Let me tell you a little-known story about an earlier attempt by a billionaire to hostilely take over Twitter
— Rabble (@rabble) April 15, 2022
Today, Twitter is trying to do just that.
“I think we need to earn trust. I think we need to be transparent. I think we need to build openly,” Shevat said.
Today, Twitter wants to partner with developers and build the tools they need to succeed, he explained.
For example, with the rebuilt API, the company focused on including features that were missing in earlier versions — like conversation threads, poll results, pinned tweets, spam filtering, streaming filtering, and more.it is also open its platformreduce Onboarding burden, Add to More free access and removed some of its earlier policy restrictions (including those affecting third-party apps).
The company says that by November 2021, 90 percent of all existing applications built on API v1.1 can be fully supported on v2, while also having access to its key new features.
“Twitter’s API v2 really listened to developer needs and feedback, and it’s all headed in the right direction,” Cohen said.
Zhou also agreed. “… It does seem to have changed from the earlier, more chaotic days, and the folks at Twitter now seem to really see the value in having this developer ecosystem and really want to invest in it – because They see it as a good thing for their users to have more options like this in terms of moderation and safety.”
But collaboration and communication are only part of serving the developer community. Helping apps get discovered and generate revenue is also a key factor.
“As we have more surfaces on Twitter, we want to create better ways to discover [developers’ apps],” Schwart said. “To be successful on the platform, developers need to be involved on the surface … they need to be discovered, and that’s what we’re trying to do in the next few experiments,” he added. “And they Need to be able to achieve financial success through innovation. “
He noted that this strategy benefits not only developers, but also end users who benefit from access to these third-party tools and services.
“It’s basically the underlying assumption behind what we’re launching,” Shevat said.
Another factor driving this strategy is Twitter’s beginning to understand that even with the accelerated pace of product development, it can’t build everything its users need.
Meanwhile, decentralization efforts through the BlueSky project will only drive more demand for developer-led innovation. To highlight current examples, there is a growing need for algorithmic choices and user-set levels of content filtering or moderation. Elon Musk bought Twitter in part because he wanted a different set of moderation rules.
Apps like Block Party, which filter out unwanted mentions and block trolls, could ultimately help with some of these issues.
“One way to think about Block Party is that it’s a different algorithm for what you’re going to see, in terms of notifications and when people tag you,” Chou explained.
“The default algorithm is that whenever someone tags you, you’ll see mentions. Having a new algorithm like Block Party installed — even if users don’t think it’s like I’m picking my own algorithm — is a different Experience. Just because someone attacked me doesn’t mean I have to see it right away,” she said. “I can choose not to watch. So now there is a different algorithm that controls the experience of mentioning.”
While Block Party’s focus is on filtering mentions, there are other areas within the Twitter product where users may want to customize their experience more than using the platform’s defaults.
One of those areas involves creators. Shevat noted that the new API adds endpoints to Twitter’s Super Follow creator subscription product, which allows users to subscribe to favorite accounts to receive exclusive content through in-app purchases. Using the API, developers can make a Super Follows application that provides followers and subscribers with different sets of content. Or it could filter the end-user experience to focus on paid content in a subscription that users are hyper-focused on.
Such apps can be promoted within Twitter when a user interacts with a super-following creator or subscribes for the first time. He also imagined how developers could build in Twitter Spaces — imagine Wordle in Spaces, he suggests — and even promote their apps on the Twitter timeline. Maybe if someone posts a link to a song, you can play it with your favorite streaming app.
It’s also easy to imagine other Twitter Toolbox apps being similarly promoted in various places on the Twitter platform — for example, when users are looking for ways to batch tweets or check their analytics.
“I think Twitter is the old Nokia phone now…it’s a good phone. But if you remember, the only app on it was Snake,” Shevat said. I see the future of Twitter as the iPhone whose value lies in…
