Twitter Gets Strict with Official API v1.1 Release

Twitter has officially released version 1.1 of its API. Initially announced in August, the updated API has stricter authentication policies and developer rules of the road, among other new features.

Twitter Toughens Up

In version 1.1, Twitter is requiring applications to authenticate all of their requests with the API. Twitter says this step will prevent abusive behavior and help it to further understand how categories of applications are using the API so it can better meet the needs of developers.

At this time, all authentication requires user context, but in the coming weeks Twitter says it will release support for a form of authentication not requiring a user context.

Twitter also updated its developer rules of the road, placing regulations against activities such as publishing private user information, resyndicating data and performing “surprise” actions not initiated by users. And all applications replicating the core Twitter experience, usually called "clients," will have some new restrictions placed on them, including a 100,000 user token limit.

There are also new display requirements (which were previously suggested guidelines), dictating things like display of the tweet author avatar and how text is displayed. Other changes include support for JSON only, discontinuing support for XML, Atom and RSS, which Twitter says are “infrequently” used.

Rate limits in version 1.1 of the API are divided into 15 minute intervals, which is a change from the 60 minute blocks in version 1.0. Additionally, all 1.1 endpoints require authentication, so no longer will there be a concept of unauthenticated calls and rate limits. Search will be rate limited at 180 queries per 15 minute window for the time being, but Twitter says it may adjust that over time. According to Twitter, developers will “now be able to query the API on a per endpoint basis a lot more than (they) previously could.” 

Show Me the Money

Although Twitter is stressing that the new changes will help eliminate abuses and make Twitter app development a more structured and orderly process, not all observers are convinced its motives are entirely pure. Last month, CMSWire columnist Stephen Fishman wrote that,

Twitter really does not care whether (solo developers) make money. Twitter cares whether Twitter makes money. In order for Twitter to make money, Twitter needs consumers to engage with Twitter on the Twitter site as much as possible. Twitter's value prop to developers is a free, functional and highly available micro-bloging platform that can easily be integrated into your site.”

Fishman also said the new API is directly aimed at “data scrapers” whose primary goal is to extract Twitter data for their own benefit.

Resyndication Rules Could Cause Problems

According to Mashabale Tech, new restrictions on resyndicating data appear to mean that information contained within a tweet — such as a URL — cannot be sent to another service using a third-party client. Mashable says this “could be problematic for social news aggregators such as paper.li, Postano and RebelMouse” and “have a much larger impact on the entire Twitter ecosystem,” including mainstream applications as well as third-party developers and power users.

Ultimately, Twitter is probably in a position to enact whatever API rules it likes and ride out any developer backlash. As Fishman states in his article, “If (Twitter’s value proposition) is not good enough, build and market your own platform and see how much money that makes you.”

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Inside The Secret Facebook Group Where "Social Marketers" Swap Tips

You're not invited to join, but one of its members gives us a tour--and a few souvenirs.

Follow Fast Company's roadmap to social media: surefire rules, data, and expert wisdom guaranteed to show why this market is completely unpredictable.

Facebook salesfolk will sell you an ad, but they can't help your posts rise atop news feeds. "The sales team doesn't know the nitty-gritty of Facebook. When you get into the science behind it, they don't understand it all," says Chris Tuff, director of earned and emerging media at the ad agency 22squared. So if you'd like some help, solicit an invitation to a private Facebook group known simply as Social Marketers. Its 380 members (as of July) parse the platform's API and help one another exploit it. "We just got wind of some new things coming over the next year," Tuff says. "Minds are going to be blown. It's about to get a lot more sophisticated and confusing. We're reliant on each other to figure out what all these changes mean."

Want to join the club? Best of luck. Here's a primer:

Name: Social Marketers

Founder: Tyler Willis, VP of business development for Unified, a marketing-technology platform for big brands

Who's involved: A mix of marketers, agency execs, and entrepreneurs. Notable members include Ekaterina Walter, Intel; Scott Monty, Ford; Esteban Contreras, Samsung; Jeff Widman, Pagelever.com; and Matt "Matty Mo" Monahan, CEO and founder, AlphaBoost, a social advertising tool.

How to get invited: Members can bring others in, but it doesn't happen often. "You have to be very discerning because you're essentially being judged on who you invite," Tuff says. He earned his entry after speaking at the AllFacebook Marketing Conference.

What to do if you're in: Participate. "Tyler Willis will say, 'Everyone comment on this post because I'm weeding out people who aren't active,' " Tuff says.

What not to do: Self-promote. Also, don't let many clients into the group. "Us being ahead is why they hire us," says Tuff.

Regular conversation topics: New tools, EdgeRank changes, and winning campaigns.

General consensus: General Motors was foolish for pulling its Facebook advertising.

Reliably controversial topic: Google+.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Baratunde Thurston Confesses How His Twitter Spamming Almost Killed "The Onion"

Photo by Brooke Nipar

Follow Fast Company's roadmap to social media: surefire rules, data, and expert wisdom guaranteed to show why this market is completely unpredictable.

I almost ruined my company's brand on Twitter. As The Onion's director of digital, I'd been testing Twitter on myself for a year before I launched @TheOnion in March 2008. Shortly thereafter, Twitter added us to its Suggested User List, which made our follower count and my ego explode. Then, on May 19, I activated the Tweetlater service to help schedule certain posts. I also enabled a feature that automatically thanked each new follower. I put some dark joke in there that I cannot remember, but trust me: It was clever and awesome. Our followers would be hooked.

I flipped the switch on Tweetlater, then left the office to attend a political fundraiser, patting myself on the back for another digital strategy job well done. But something wasn't right. My iPhone began buzzing incessantly from inbound Twitter alerts. Hundreds of people were complaining that @TheOnion was spamming their timelines. Then I realized my mistake: I had set the gratitude bot to thank individual followers publicly, rather than in private. We were flooding our thousands of followers with scores of duplicated tweets. As I realized the scale of my mistake, my phone stopped working altogether. The iPhone sadly lacks the ability to process a constant stream of hate-filled text messages. I raced home, a 45-minute journey, to unplug the brand-destroying doomsday device, but I was too late. For a day at least, I turned The Onion into a social media joke akin to its own headline "New Social Networking Site Changing the Way Oh, Christ, Forget It."

Saving me from complete embarrassment was the fact that in May 2008, not as many people cared about Twitter as today, so there weren't very many witnesses to my crime. Since then, the stakes have gotten much higher. For organizations, brands, and individuals, social media has become mainstream with a multitude of platforms, assumptions, and expectations--all sucking away ever-larger slices of marketing budgets, even though the payoff isn't always clear. As Occupy protesters often chant during police raids, the whole world is watching. But what do we see? We're not even sure. We gather at conferences and ask each other, again, "Is it the regime-toppling, rights-bolstering, community-enabling conversational sales channel we've been promised?"--and those questions still feel new and compelling, because nobody has a good answer.

Twitter is a medium of adorable baby photos and adorable cat photos and adorable baby cat photos. And on top of this, brands have amassed a layer of well-paid social media experts--consultants! executives!--who are tasked with transforming brands into friends. For companies that see this new frontier as a marketing opportunity (and that's basically all of them), it is a thin line between relevant and creepy stalker. You want to be where the conversation is and join it in an "authentic" way, but just because someone is talking about your product does not mean he wants to talk about it with you. Should every human gathering place be targeted for interactive marketing campaigns? How would you feel if you and your friends were out dining, discussing Game of Thrones, and an HBO executive suddenly joined your table screaming, "Winter is coming!"

I sympathize with the marketer's lament for a simpler time when you could just buy some TV ads a year in advance, drink a few martinis, sexually harass your secretary, and go home. Even five years ago, a home-page stunt or takeover might have sufficed. Today, the platforms you "need to be on" change every few weeks. Facebook Groups are out and Pages are in. No, Pages are out and Subscriptions are in. Tumblr is the new black, and email is actually the best social network. Tom from MySpace has returned . . . on Facebook. And what on earth is your Pinterest strategy? Oh, you don't have one? Congratulations, you just unlocked the Irrelevant Businessperson Badge on Foursquare.

Even figuring out your platform of choice doesn't provide much comfort or stability because the platforms don't want to share all their rules and methods out of well-placed fear that some of you will abuse that knowledge. Or, maybe they don't even know themselves. Social media services seem torn between protecting their users, empowering their users, selling out their users, and annoying everyone.

Now, try measuring that. What is success? Impressions? Clicks? Mentions? Sales? Viewers? Some new unit based on a dopamine meter and backdoor API installed in the user's hypothalamus? Yes! Let's call that metric "feelies."

Source : fastcompany[dot]com