Twitter has announced an update that will significantly improve the experience within Twitter apps developed by other companies and developers, such as the Tweetbot app, bringing the social media platform more of its tools into the hands of developers.
The new update gives developers much greater access to the timeline (Tweets sorted by time) as this update to Twitter's recently launched API v2 gives developers an easy way to "retrieve the latest Tweets and Retweets posted by users and accounts that have They follow it."
In other words, the developer can see what data Twitter is showing you that was previously blocked, so that their app can also show it to you differently.
For app developers like Tweetbot, this feature is most welcome. Paul Haddad, one of the developers of Tweetbot, was quoted as saying that the old-fashioned way of getting a user's timeline "is one of the most used features by developers" but is limited. .
The old version of the API was released in 2012, so this technology is rather outdated, and developers using it faced many limitations when trying to get the user's timeline.
In an email to The Verge, Haddad explained that the change would make Tweetbot more responsive to users, and said, “We will simply be able to update the timeline more often and allow users to scroll back in their timeline, which was not the case. previously permitted.
Currently, the old version allows you to request the user’s timeline 15 times every 15 minutes, and can return up to 800 tweets, while the new version “APIV 2” supports up to 180 requests per user in the same time frame, and retrieves 3200 tweets. .
From a technical standpoint, Haddad says, the new update makes things simpler;
“Currently we use an interface to get a list of tweets and then use another one to fill in any specific data (eg polls, cards, metrics etc..) but now with this new version we can get all this data in one step via the new interface ".
Twitter says it's trying to make adjustments with developers, after years of introducing new exclusive features only to its app.
To signify its cooperation with third-party developers, Twitter has removed restrictions from its terms of service that made it difficult for third-party customers to compete with its official app, such as limits on the number of users they can have.
With Friday's announcement, the company appears to be continuing with its approach of giving developers access to important features that were once the preserve of it.