Twitter History

In the coming weeks, we will be seeing stricter guidelines regarding how developers can use the Twitter API.  As part of a larger research project on the business of Twitter's API, I've compiled notes from over a 1000 blog posts and tweets by Twitter, the tech blogosphere and Twitter ecosystem, to help understand how we got to this point with the Twitter API ecosystem.

Here you will find my raw research notes, which you can filter by category, perform keyword search on.  If I missed something, you can suggest a link I will consider adding to the timeline.

This research is ongoing, and not 100% edited, and subject to change at any time.  Feel free to use the research as you wish, but please attribute it back to API Voice to help further spread the message. 

2006
Jul 2006
07/15/2006 Odeo released a new service today called Twttr Open
Sep 2006
09/20/2006 Twitter officially releases their API Open
09/22/2006 Twitter showcases Cell, a little flash tool for showing tweets Open
09/26/2006 Twitter showcases TikiRobot for iChat to Twitter via API Open
09/27/2006 Twitter launches permalinks, giving tweets their own pages Open
09/27/2006 Twitter launches RSS for for public timelines and individual timelines Open
09/28/2006 Twitter showcases the iheartquotes app for getting famous quotes of Twitter Open
Oct 2006
10/01/2006 Twitter showcases Wiffiti, and lets you send txt messages to screens in public locations Open
10/11/2006 Twitter showcases Chris Messina's Twitter Mac Application Celly Open
10/23/2006 Twitter launches the Twitter Actionscript 3 API Open
10/26/2006 Twitter introduces Jabber integration allowing Twitter over instant message Open
Nov 2006
11/13/2006 Twitter's Jabber Support Released Under GPL Open
11/14/2006 Twitter adds favorites Open
11/14/2006 Twitter adds the ability to delete Open
11/14/2006 Twitter adds the ability to direct message Open
11/14/2006 Twitter adds the ability to search for users Open
11/20/2006 Twitter showcases a Wordpress Plugin for Twitter Open
11/20/2006 Twitter showcases a new site for Twitter addicts called ThirdPersons.com Open
11/23/2006 Twitter showcases a Twitter Dashboard Widget for OSX Open
11/28/2006 Twitter showcases Twadget a Windows Vista Sidebar gadget Open
11/28/2006 Twitter showcases Twitter integration with MyChores Open
11/28/2006 Twitter showcases Twitter integration with Dealtagger Open
11/28/2006 Twitter showcases a Ruby Twitter Gem Open
Dec 2006
12/05/2006 Twitter announces AOL Instant Messenger integration Open
12/08/2006 Twitter showcases taskbar application Twapp Open
12/10/2006 Twitter showcases of Twitter in the Los Angeles Times Open
12/20/2006 Twitter announces 30Boxes web-based calendar application integration Open
2007
Jan 2007
01/10/2007 Twitter showcases that BBC News is using Twitter for breaking stories Open
Feb 2007
02/14/2007 Twitter showcases a comment by Anil Dash, The sign of success in social software is when your community does something you didn't expect. Open
02/14/2007 Twitter creates a Wordpress sidebar widget Open
02/17/2007 Twitter showcases a comment by Jeff Barr, I’ll officially declare here that you should be able to get my attention via Twitter and that I consider it a valid form of business communication Open
02/23/2007 Twitter showcases Defamer bringing Twitter to the Oscars Open
Mar 2007
03/08/2007 Twitter adds more machines to deal with slowness Open
03/09/2007 Twitter uses shortcode to mobilize everyone for SXSW Open
03/15/2007 Twitter sets up a Google Group for discussing various issues around the Twitter API Open
03/16/2007 Twitter showcases a Twitter API project that sends out the headlines with a link from the New York Times Open
03/20/2007 Twitter is having major slowness caused by massive popularity Open
03/20/2007 Twitter did some forensic analysis of our slowness and discovered that API traffic, specifically, XML over our API is HUGE Open
03/21/2007 Twitter showcases a story about them in the Chicago Tribune Open
03/26/2007 Twitter fixes problem that prevented Jabber and Gtalk IM users from tweeting Open
03/26/2007 Twitter showcases being covered in the Financial Times Open
Apr 2007
04/05/2007 Twitter updates the API to include direct messaging and a since parameter Open
04/05/2007 Twitter spends time documenting the Twitter API better Open
04/05/2007 Twitter showcases the Twitter Development Talk group Open
04/05/2007 Twitter showcases version 2.0 of the wildly popular Twitterrific Mac client Open
04/07/2007 Twitter receives a Series A round was led by Softbank, with Softbank NY, RRE Ventures, Betaworks, High Line Venture Partners, AOL Ventures, SV Angel and some individual angels investing Open
04/07/2007 Techcrunch announces that SocialFlow now has access to the Twitter firehose Open
04/10/2007 Twitter showcases Twitterverse a mashup and visualization project which mines and archives the public timeline of Twitter and provides a visualization of the most commonly used words in a given time period Open
04/16/2007 Twitter showcases Socializr, a free web service for sharing event and party information with your friends Open
04/18/2007 Twitter announces the formation of Twitter, Inc. Open
04/26/2007 Twitter showcases TwitterCamp, a desktop application that allows you to monitor tweets from your friends Open
May 2007
05/11/2007 Twitter deploys a new number for Australian users Open
05/14/2007 Twitter provides hAtom on pages that show lists of Twitter updates Open
05/14/2007 Twitter provides hCard for the authors of updates Open
05/14/2007 Twitter provides XFN for friends of users Open
05/16/2007 Twitter makes enhancements to m.twitter.com Open
05/17/2007 Twitter Outage Open
05/24/2007 Twitter warns about potential privacy concerns in 3rd party apps. Open
05/25/2007 Twitter launches a Facebook App Open
05/25/2007 Twitter is now Available in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew Open
05/31/2007 Twitter showcases Netvibes integration Open
Jun 2007
06/07/2007 Twitter showcases the Twitterrific application for use at WWDC Open
06/20/2007 Twitter showcases the Multimap twitter bot that helps you to access the same maps, directions and local information that you find on multimap.com by sending direct messages via twitter Open
06/21/2007 Twitter talks about how they use Ruby on Rails as their language for building the Twitter back-end Open
06/22/2007 Twitter introduces API rate limits Open
06/22/2007 Starting early next week we'll be deploying some simple API rate limiting. Every authenticated user gets 1440 (one thousand four hundred and forty) requests per 24 hour period, starting from their first request. Open
06/22/2007 To put this in perspective, that's enough to make one authenticated request to the Twitter API every minute, all day, every day Open
06/26/2007 Twitter showcases article in Wired Open
Jul 2007
07/03/2007 Twitter showcases a new downloads page where users can find free applications for Windows, Mac, and Firefox thanks to some smart Twitter fans and our API Open
07/09/2007 Twitter showcases being feature in TIME as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2007 Open
07/26/2007 Twitter gets funding from Union Square Ventures Open
07/26/2007 Twitter showcases they are working with our old friends out here on the West Coast at Charles River Ventures. In addition, we're honored to include some folks we've been inspired by as angel investors including Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, and Naval Ravikant to name a few Open
Aug 2007
08/03/2007 Twitter showcases that PC World wrote about how the Los Angeles Fire Department uses Twitter to post information about fires and other emergencies Open
08/15/2007 Twitter fixes some slowness in their system Open
08/27/2007 Twitter integrates with Gmail to see who in your address book is already on Twitter Open
Sep 2007
09/06/2007 Twitter experiences some heavy traffic during scheduled maintenance window and encounters some issues Open
09/28/2007 Twitter discusses 2 hours of scheduled downtime Open
09/28/2007 Twitter goes to the MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas Open
Oct 2007
10/08/2007 Twitter hires Operations Engineer, Jay Edwards Open
10/30/2007 Twitter showcases web app ThinCloud, that is featured at Apple.com Open
Nov 2007
11/08/2007 Twitter showcases Foamee, an IOU system built on Twitter that helps you track who you owe beers, and who owes you a beer Open
11/27/2007 Twitter is featured on an episode of CSI Open
11/28/2007 Twitter added a couple of features to m.twitter.com Open
Dec 2007
12/03/2007 Twitter restarts the Twitter database to get rid of slowness in the site Open
12/03/2007 When the Guardian asks Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, to tell readers what the future holds. That's easy: Twitter! Open
12/03/2007 Vint Cerf: Twitter has emerged to create a seamless layer of social connectivity across SMS, IM, and the web. Open
12/06/2007 Twitter is looking for an International Business Development Manager Open
12/10/2007 Twitter showcases Overheard.it a site that pulls in all the fun things people overhear on Twitter Open
12/13/2007 Twitter showcases how PBS MediaShift Idea Lab Twitter uses Twitter: Our small group suggested having reporters at newspapers or magazines begin using the immediacy and interactivity of Twitter. A beat reporter could enlist a dozen or two dozen passionate, driven readers to serve as a kind of Twitter posse. Open
12/14/2007 Twitter showcases US local newspaper the Nashua Telegraph has been experimenting with Twitter for its breaking news coverage Open
12/14/2007 Twitter talks about upcoming maintenance on Saturday Open
12/15/2007 Twitter finishes maintenance early and updates with shorter maintenance window Open
12/15/2007 Twitter experiences some slowness Open
12/23/2007 Twitter showcases the Twitter search tool Terraminds Open
2008
Jan 2008
01/15/2008 Twitter is currently experiencing some slowness related to the massive number of updates around Steve Job's keynote at MacWorld Open
01/16/2008 Digital Garage has made an investment in Twitter Open
01/16/2008 To support continued growth in Japan, Twitter has formed a partnership with Digital Garage to create the official Twitter Japan service Open
01/17/2008 Twitter launches SMS shortcode in India Open
01/18/2008 Twitter open sources Starling, a light-weight persistent queue server that speaks the MemCache protocol. It was built to drive Twitter's backend, and is in production across Twitter's cluster Open
01/25/2008 Twitter showcases an article in the New York Times about Twitter called Campaign Reporting in Under 140 Taps Open
01/25/2008 Twitter showcases that there are well over 200 apps on the Twitter Fan Wiki Open
01/30/2008 Twitter discusses their hosting arrangement with Joyent Open
01/31/2008 Twitter experiences an overnight outage Open
Feb 2008
02/07/2008 Twitter showcases TweetStats for graphing your own Twitter updates Open
02/07/2008 Twitter discusses recent issues of missing Twitter updates Open
02/08/2008 Twitter showcases Sand a virtual assistant that works over Twitter Open
02/11/2008 Twitter showcases Dearlazyweb a personal tool which works over Twitter for querying the LazyWeb, a research question and answer application Open
02/11/2008 Twitter showcases Qwitter, a Twitter powered social tool designed to help people quit smoking Open
02/11/2008 Twitter showcases Commuter Feed a free service that lets you see reports on traffic incidents in your local area using Twitter Open
02/12/2008 Twitter addressed some performance and reliability issues Open
02/14/2008 Twitter showcases an article about Twitter in the Economist Open
02/20/2008 60% of Twitter web traffic comes from outside the United States Open
02/21/2008 Twitter showcases a Twitter Badge that translates you and your friends updates into Snoop speak Open
02/21/2008 Twitter showcases polling application StrawPoll Open
02/27/2008 Twitter showcases a Twitter users group in Madrid Open
02/28/2008 Twitter showcases the new version of the Mac OS Twitter application, Twitterrific Open
02/29/2008 Twitter showcases Wordy Birdie, a game that works within Twitter Open
Mar 2008
03/01/2008 Twitter showcases Twitter meter, and app that lets you query an index of all the words that have been sent to twitter's public timeline in a graph Open
03/13/2008 Twitter showcases several Twitter visualizations from FlowingData Open
03/14/2008 Twitter showcases their uptime and reliability during SXSW Open
03/14/2008 Twitter showcases reviews application Tweviews Open
03/14/2008 Twitter showcases Twitter integration in Skitch and using Skitch to Twitter an image Open
03/19/2008 Twitter showcases twitter status syndication application Twitsig.com Open
03/24/2008 Twitter showcases the Twitter conversation application Quotably Open
03/24/2008 Twitter showcases link sharing and shortening application Tweetburner Open
Apr 2008
04/04/2008 Twitter announces that Twhirl has been acquired by online video company, Seesmic Open
04/08/2008 Twitter showcases Twitterholics Open
04/14/2008 Twitter showcases ChaCha, a Twitter driven question service Open
04/22/2008 Twitter is launched in Japan Open
04/28/2008 Twitter showcases Twitstori, a social experiment based on Twitter Open
May 2008
05/01/2008 Twitter has trouble restarting a database Open
05/07/2008 Twitter showcases coverage by Reuters Open
05/16/2008 Twitter showcases an article they have in BusinessWeek Open
05/20/2008 Twitter causes a database to fail during a routine update Open
05/22/2008 Twitter defends its changes to terms of use regarding abuse Open
05/24/2008 Twitter lowers API limits to 30 authenticated requests per hour (down from 70) Open
05/24/2008 Twitter's main database crashed because of too many connections Open
05/24/2008 Twitter defends its terms of service position Open
05/26/2008 There is a controversy over Twitter’s Terms of Service Open
05/27/2008 Twitter allows you to make 70 requests per hour or roughly one request every minute Open
05/28/2008 Twitter lowers the API request limit to 30 requests per hour Open
05/29/2008 Twitter creates a new blog dedicated to status updates regarding Twitter performance and reliability Open
05/29/2008 Twitter creates status.twitter.com Open
05/31/2008 Twitter turns off XMPP gateway is turned off so we can’t use IM clients with Twitter Open
05/31/2008 Ev and Biz talk about Twitter stability with Robert Scoble Open
Jun 2008
06/08/2008 Twitter talks about how they'll scale to deal with WWDC Open
06/09/2008 Twitter announces the fact that they managed to stay up during WWDC Open
06/09/2008 Twitter experiences 10 times normal traffic during WWDC Open
06/12/2008 Twitter showcases that book reading platform DailyLit has Twitter support Open
06/13/2008 Twitter is showcasing the fact that Twitterrific won Best iPhone Social Networking Application, at the recent Apple Design Awards in San Francisco, CA Open
06/24/2008 Twitter announces two new members of our investment team, Bijan Sabet with Spark Capital in Boston and Jeff Bezos of Bezos Expeditions in Seattle join Twitter's investment team Open
06/24/2008 Twitter will become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model. However, our biggest opportunities will be worth pursuing only when we achieve our vision of Twitter as a global communication utility. To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust. Private funding gives us the runway we need to stay focused on the infrastructure that will help our business take flight. We will continue hiring systems engineers, operators, and architects, as well as consultants, scientists, and other professionals to help us realize our vision. Open
06/27/2008 Twhirl talks about howTwitter decided to change the behaviour of the request now, so the algorithm implemented in twhirl does no longer work correctly Open
06/27/2008 We knew Twitter would sometimes change what the request returns, to reflect your remaining hits in the current 60 minutes period. But although we asked them to not do it without prior notice to developers to give them time to change their applications to the new behaviour, we were surprised they changed it so fast. Open
Jul 2008
07/02/2008 Twitters first week in their new offices Open
07/07/2008 Twitter creates a special real-time feed of every single public Twitter update to be delivered over the open XMPP protocol. Despite delivery over a faster and cheaper technology, this entire public feed of Twitter updates is resource intensive Open
07/07/2008 Few other companies have since approached Twitter and made arrangements with us to gain access. There are four services currently accessing our public timeline feed over XMPP: Twittervision, Zappos, FriendFeed, and Summize. Open
07/07/2008 While the XMPP feed of the full Twitter Public Timeline is an amazing resource, drinking from the fire hose is not the best way to quench a thirst Open
07/07/2008 The Twitter API rate limit is currently set to 20 requests per hour but we’re working to bring it back to 70 Open
07/07/2008 Twitter says they are experimenting with XMPP, and informing the future direction of our developer platform Open
07/07/2008 Twitter says that ultimately, the API will be updated and extended to support a wider variety of interesting projects by a great many talented developers Open
07/14/2008 Twitter acquires Summize Open
07/17/2008 To help the embattled site stay up between Fail Whales, they've at times reduced features to just try and keep afloat, blocking the replies tab, reducing pagination, and blocking Instant Messaging Open
07/17/2008 Twitter visibly tweaked the rate for authenticated API hits, first down from 70 to 20 and back up to 100. Open
07/17/2008 Until recently, unauthenticated API requests were unlimited, which all changed Wednesday night around 5 p.m. Pacific Time, when Twitter ratcheted them down to the same 100 per hour per IP address Open
07/17/2008 Alex Payne of Twitter told developers last Thursday: In our continued effort to keep things fast and prevent abuse we're planning on introducing rate-limiting by IP for unauthenticated API requests. We'll allow 100 unauthenticated requests per IP per hour, just as we currently do with authenticated requests Open
07/17/2008 Jodee Rich of PeopleBrowsr talks about rate limits and say this will blow us out of the water Open
07/18/2008 TechCrunch: Gnip gets access to Twitter's XMPP Open
07/21/2008 Twitter educates users about the battle against SPAM Open
07/23/2008 Twitter showcases analytics app TwitterCounter Open
Aug 2008
08/05/2008 Twitter educates uses about Malicious Software or Malware Open
08/07/2008 Twitter educates users about the progress they are making on defending against Twitter SPAM Open
08/12/2008 Twitter showcases how the New York Times is using Twitter Open
08/13/2008 Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over the UK number Open
08/13/2008 Twitter will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe Open
08/18/2008 Twitter announces Alex Payne as official Twitter API lead Open
08/20/2008 Twitter showcases ambient infotainment product Chumby adds a Twitter widget and Twitter search to their directory Open
08/21/2008 Twitter launches a new admin tool which allows us to more efficiently deal with spam Open
Oct 2008
10/09/2008 @replies are now available on m.twitter.com Open
10/16/2008 Ev steps in as CEO Open
10/16/2008 Jack steps into role as Chairman of the Board Open
10/18/2008 Twitter showcases Twitroid, a developers Twitter client for Android Open
Nov 2008
11/06/2008 Stephen Colbert and John Stewart Talk About Twitter Open
11/24/2008 Twitter acquires Values of n Open
11/26/2008 Twitter has to switch Canadian SMS to a limited number because of out of control SMS costs on existing Open
11/28/2008 Twitter acquires Whisper Systems Open
Dec 2008
12/15/2008 Google integrates Twitter with Friend Connect Open
12/23/2008 Twitter showcases that Digg creates accounts for many popular categories and promotes them via Twitter Open
12/30/2008 Twitter showcases a book called Twitter Means Business Open
2009
Jan 2009
01/03/2009 Twitter educates users about Phishing scams on Twitter Open
01/09/2009 Twitter has been experiencing intermittent delivery delays Open
01/13/2009 Twitter open sources Kestrel, a message queue server used to asynchronously connect many of the services and functions of the underlying Twitter architecture Open
01/13/2009 Twitter open sources Cache-Money a Ruby on Rails caching tool Open
01/13/2009 Twitter hires Kevin Thau as Director of Mobile Business Development Open
01/15/2009 Twitter announces partner with Zendesk to offer support for Twitter Open
01/21/2009 Gabe Wachob: Twitter should make a distinction between client apps and third party apps in the REST API so that the access rate caps can be treated differently. Client Apps are apps that run in the domain of the one user whose credentials are being used (ie a desktop app). These sort of apps generally have no good reason for hitting the API many times a second. Third party apps are accessing the API in an unauthenticated manner, or using the credentials of the user (ie a third party site like http://twitter.grader.com). These have a legitimate need for high volume access Open
01/21/2009 Gabe Wachob: Twitter should cap the number of requests to some reasonably large number, but offer tiers of access above that cap for pay.  Along with the increased caps, offer a modest for-pay support program for heavy use third party applications. (something like $20-$100 per month for each level of 10000 requests/hr) Open
01/21/2009 Twitter talks about how to implement OAuth for third party apps and require, as terms of service, that third party apps do NOT collect username and passwords for users Open
01/21/2009 Gabe Wachob: The little guys using the REST API should be able to be big guys simply by participating in the for-pay program when its in their interest, and not as a way to get access to an exclusive club of functionality. Open
01/21/2009 RWW: Twitter announced on its developer email list that API calls from a single IP will be limited to 20,000 per hour Open
01/21/2009 ReadWriteWeb: SocialToo complains that Twitter should let it pay for heavy access to the API if it won't allow it for free, but Twitter apparently isn't interested Open
01/21/2009 Twitter: We picked the 20,000 requests per hour number precisely because it effects the fewest applications (less than ten of the hosts we see in our hourly report of high-traffic consumers of our site). Open
01/21/2009 Twitter: We're constantly upgrading our API technologies and educating developers about offerings we already have that they may not know about, including the Search API, Data Mining Feed, and the upcoming "firehose" of all public tweets. Open
01/21/2009 Twitter: The fact that 100% Twitter-powered companies like StockTwits are getting funding and expanding in popularity suggests that the Twitter API is meeting the needs of successful, growing businesses today. Open
01/21/2009 Twitter has been working on developing its own button for some time now and has employed the help of TweetMeme, makers of the widely used "retweet button," to work out the kinks for its new system. Open
01/21/2009 RWW: Twitter has been working on developing its own button for some time now and has employed the help of TweetMeme, makers of the widely used "retweet button," to work out the kinks for its new system. Open
01/21/2009 Mashable: “Starting later this week we’ll be limiting those on the whitelist to 20,000 requests per hour. Yes, you read that right: twenty THOUSAND requests per hour. According to our logs, this accounts for all but the very largest consumers of our API. This is essentially a preventative measure to ensure that no one API client, even a whitelisted account or IP, can consume an inordinate amount of our resoures.” Open
01/22/2009 Twitters Alex Payne says that Twitter needs to put a throttle on API access to keep the service available to all developers, and furthermore that its limit will affect fewer than 10 applications Open
01/29/2009 I certainly hope that Twitter gets itself monetized, and pronto, and can preferably do away with this whole Twitter API issue, or at least raise it significantly to allow Twitter to function well Open
01/29/2009 Traci Knoppe: I certainly hope that Twitter gets itself monetized, and pronto, and can preferably do away with this whole Twitter API issue, or at least raise it significantly to allow Twitter to function well. Open
Feb 2009
02/09/2009 Twitter discusses the removal of fake Twitter account for the Dalai Lama and the policies around impersonating someone on Twitter Open
02/10/2009 Twitter announces that they will not charge for Twitter and not 100% sure on how they'll monetize Twitter Open
02/10/2009 Twitter announces that they will not charge for Twitter and not 100% sure on how they'll monetize Twitter Open
02/12/2009 Twitter showcases a new blocking methodology for clickjacking Open
02/13/2009 Active users on Twitter have increased 900% in a year Open
02/13/2009 Twitter sees twice as much traffic via API then the website Open
02/13/2009 Twitter closes funding with Peter Fenton from Benchmark and Todd Chaffee from Institutional Venture Partners Open
02/13/2009 Twitter is now positioned extremely well to support the accelerating growth of our service, further enable the robust ecosystem sprouting up around Twitter, and yes, to begin building revenue-generating products Open
Mar 2009
03/06/2009 Twitter discovers 750 Twitter accounts that were broken into and had a link to a webcam site posted on the accounts Open
03/06/2009 Twitter educates users about using strong passwords Open
03/11/2009 Twitter now has 30 employees Open
03/11/2009 Twitter showcases pair programming introduced into their company by Pivotal Labs Open
03/12/2009 Twistori and Twennis have created an amazing, interactive visualization of what's happening at SXSW Open
03/18/2009 Twitter showcases that the developer ecosystem is primarily using Ruby, PHP, Python and PERL Open
03/23/2009 Salesforce announces an enterprise product built upon the Twitter platform Open
03/26/2009 Twitter announces an agreement between Vodafone UK for sending and receiving SMS Open
03/29/2009 Twitter hands off management of sponsored, topic-focused social media experiences with Twitter to Federated Media Open
03/30/2009 There Twitter API Issues Open
03/30/2009 Twitter asks developers if there are any examples of Twitter OAuth to show off? Open
Apr 2009
04/06/2009 Twitter asks developers, what would be on their list of things to tell new Twitter API developers? Open
04/06/2009 There are Twitter service latency due to database issues Open
04/06/2009 Twitter is swamped by maintenance issues and has to place the site in maintenance mode to finish Open
04/12/2009 Twitter is infected by a worm, which brought the platform down Open
04/15/2009 Twitter asks users What does your Twitter client of choice do for you that no other Twitter client does? Open
04/22/2009 Twitter says they whitelist developers and apps Open
04/22/2009 OAuth is down Open
04/29/2009 The default rate limit for calls to the REST API is 100 requests per hour Open
04/30/2009 Unauthorized access to Twitter was gained by an outside party, showing access to 10 individual accounts Open
May 2009
05/05/2009 Twitter tells developers to launch their apps at @140tc Open
05/05/2009 Twitter users can send and receive Tweets via SMS on Rogers and Fido in Canada Open
05/07/2009 Twitter is reviewing a queue of nearly 100 data mining requests, to approve projects Open
05/07/2009 The public_timeline is currently stuck Open
05/10/2009 The public_timeline is stuck Open
05/11/2009 Twitter launches full, two-way SMS support for Telus, Virgin Mobile, and Koodo Mobile, making Twitter live on all major operators in Canada Open
05/13/2009 Twitter meets with the @cotweet guys to provide feedback. @al3x, @mzsanford and @dougw use their product to answer the Twitter API questions Open
05/14/2009 @biz talks about recent replies changes Open
05/20/2009 Traditional web banner advertising isn't interesting to Twitter Open
05/20/2009 To say we are philosophically opposed to any and all advertising is incorrect. Open
05/20/2009 The idea of taking money to run traditional banner ads on Twitter.com has always been low on our list of interesting ways to generate revenue Open
05/24/2009 Twitter launches full, two-way SMS for Vodafone customers in New Zealand Open
05/26/2009 Twitter API ripe for abuse by web worms Open
05/27/2009 Twitter provides API best practices on how to setup cron jobs that use Twitter Open
Jun 2009
06/05/2009 Marshall Kirkpatrick: Twitter staff doesn't use Twitter like other power users, and this is a problem Open
06/08/2009 API rate limit remains at 30 requests per hour Open
06/09/2009 The API request limit has been temporarily dropped to 10 per hour. Please configure your clients not to pull more frequently than once every 6 minutes Open
06/12/2009 Twitter adds @rsarver & @noradio to the Twitter team Open
06/12/2009 Twitter adds @rsarver to the team Open
06/12/2009 Twitter adds@noradio to the team Open
06/15/2009 Twitter showcases, Bitter is a Twitter app for Boxee Open
06/16/2009 Twitter successfully finishes a planned outage that they moved because events in Iran were to critical Open
06/19/2009 Twitter temporarily reducing the API rate limit to 20 requests per hour in order to help address the latency issues we’re seeing Open
06/29/2009 Twitter is taking the default limit from 350 and cutting it to 175. Open
06/29/2009 To ensure fairness to all users of the API, the reduced rate limit is proportional to that application or users’ allowance rather than a fixed value of requests Open
06/29/2009 Matt Harris: Reducing the API rate-limit is not the first or only method we use and is one we try to avoid if possible. However, it is also one of the more effective ways to reduce load and ensure that the Twitter service remains available to the greatest number of users, Open
06/29/2009 Techcrunch: The API represents approximately 75% of the traffic that comes to twitter.com Open
06/30/2009 Twitter showcases Twittering from the Flickr API Open
Jul 2009
07/01/2009 Twitter: The ecosystem growing around Twitter is something we very much believe in nourishing and supporting Open
07/01/2009 Twitter applies to trademark Tweet, but has no intention of going after existing, quality applications Open
07/01/2009 Twitter: We'll work together to ensure success for Twitter, developers, and everyone who uses these services while avoiding confusion and maintaining quality Open
07/01/2009 Using its Terms of Service and API documentation I couldn’t find any reference on their website about this either. (update: a commenter links to the US trademark application, which was filed April 16, 2009 and another one claims a trademark application has been filed in Europe in June Open
07/01/2009 Twitter starts taking control of their brand Open
07/01/2009 Techcrunch: Twitter Grows Uncomfortable With The Use Of The Word Tweet In Applications Open
07/01/2009 Twitter hourly API call limit has been increased from 100 to 150 per hour Open
07/02/2009 The default rate limit for calls to the REST API is 150 requests per hour. Open
07/02/2009 Twitter quietly increased the limit from 100 to 150 requests per hour Open
07/02/2009 ProgrammableWeb: High volume applications can request whitelisting which, if approved, increases the limit to 20,000 requests per hour. Open
07/04/2009 Twitter showcases TweetCraft an in-game Twitter client for World of Warcraft Open
07/11/2009 Twitter raises the API limit considerably (on an experimental basis). Open
07/16/2009 Twitter was contacted by two blog journalists who had just been offered internal business documents stolen from Twitter by a hacker Open
07/16/2009 TechCrunch shares some documents from over 300 confidential Twitter documents that were taken from the company Open
07/22/2009 Twitter imposes new User Agent requirement for the Search API Open
07/27/2009 Full, two-way interaction with Twitter over SMS is now available for everyone who uses O2, the largest mobile operator in the UK Open
Aug 2009
08/03/2009 Twitter announces new Twitter account, @APIannounce where they will tweet any update to the Twitter API Open
08/06/2009 Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack Open
08/13/2009 Twitter releases developer preview of the Retweeting API Open
08/13/2009 Twitter begins testing and rolling out Retweeting across the platform Open
08/20/2009 Twitter releases developer preview of the Geolocation API Open
08/20/2009 Twitter platform developers have been doing innovative work with location for some time despite having access to only a rudimentary level of API support Open
08/20/2009 Twitter releases a developer preview of geolocation to developers Open
08/27/2009 Twitter announces 140: The Twitter Conference LA Open
Sep 2009
09/03/2009 MySpace can now sync their MySpace account with Twitter Open
09/04/2009 Followers API is incorrectly limiting results to a max of 5000 total users Open
09/10/2009 Tweets belong to users, not to twitter Open
09/10/2009 Twitter makes changes to Terms of Service Open
09/22/2009 Twitpocalypse 2 has come and gone Open
09/22/2009 Twitpocalypse 2 in less than an hour Open
09/23/2009 Twitter is integrated into AIM, Bebo and AOL.com Open
09/25/2009 Twitter gets investment from Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Morgan Stanley Open
09/30/2009 Twitter is testing out Twitter lists Open
Oct 2009
10/01/2009 Twitter rolls out the Geolocation API Open
10/08/2009 Talks about deals with Microsoft and Google Open
10/08/2009 Twitter is currently available only in English and Japanese Open
10/08/2009 Twitter invites a small group of people to become volunteer translators Open
10/13/2009 Twitter introduces the Report as SPAM button Open
10/14/2009 Twitter releases a new SPAM Reporting API Open
10/14/2009 Twitter cuts off Scoopler's firehose access Open
10/16/2009 Twitter puts out draf document for the LIst API Open
10/18/2009 Widely scattered network connectivity problems Open
10/21/2009 TechCrunch talks about both Bing and Google getting access to firehose Open
10/21/2009 Twitter announces firehose partnership with Google Open
10/21/2009 Twitter announces firehose partnership with Bing Open
10/21/2009 Twitter: Our goal is focus on delivering the best information possible. Open
10/21/2009 Twitter: The long term value will be how good the product is, and how many users. Open
10/21/2009 There might be some advertising that makes sense for Twitter. Twitter is not a social network, it is an information network. A big part of that is business and monetizable information. Twitter is a powerful tool for branding and driving sales for businesses. They are not worried about some day extracting revenue from that value. Open
10/21/2009 There are so man different types of Twitter users doing radically different things. There are some obvious things that people need, that Twitter can generate money from. Open
10/21/2009 Like everything else they do, Twitter will monetization as a platform. There are lots of 3rd party developers to already do this. Comcast doesn't do their own, they use a 3rd party tool from a developer. Open
10/21/2009 The two biggest areas Twitter are seeing growth are mobile and International. Open
10/21/2009 Twitter's developers are the largest portion of their traffic. Open
10/21/2009 Twitter sees the open exchange of data being important. Its not about an exit or payoff for investors. Open
10/21/2009 Question of sustainability on platform. is there a business model for the 3rd party developer ecosystem. People have a concern about revenue model relationships with Twitter. Twitter says they can get better providing a framework for this including updated TOS. That is all they can say now. Open
10/21/2009 Architecturally they split consumer Twitter and API Twitter. Open
10/21/2009 Ev is not concerned with Scalability as he used to. But he's not satisfied. They said they've fixed the core issues this year. Scalability is not an issue today. Most portions of the system are horizontally scalable. They have the money and hardware to scale this. Open
10/21/2009 Reliability is something Twitter still working on. Its second after scalability. They'll be working on for a while. Balance with new features and better user experience. Open
10/21/2009 Twitter has had overactive SPAM tools that have suspended accounts. Open
10/21/2009 Twitter tries to set limits so things don't get out of control. If legitimate uses run into these just let us know Open
10/21/2009 Twitter: Features of 3rd party clients. Your bringing features from the ecosystem into Twitter. Is that going to be a challenge in competing with the best features of your ecosystem. This is a class platform problem. The way Twitter approaches is to build an API along with each features, so it makes it more powerful regarding what 3rd party developers can do. Open
Nov 2009
11/03/2009 Spanish version of Twitter.com is launched Open
11/09/2009 Twitter enters partnership with AXIS (@axisgsm) in Indonesia to offer tweets via SMS Open
11/10/2009 LinkedIn launched a smart integration that lets you sync up your account with Twitter Open
11/11/2009 Elevated Number of Errors Open
11/16/2009 Twitter launches the Find People API Open
11/16/2009 Orange UK turned on Twitter SMS Open
11/16/2009 Orange UK users can also send picture messages (MMS) Open
11/19/2009 French version of Twitter.com is launched Open
11/19/2009 Retweet API launched to 100% of users Open
11/19/2009 Twitter is available in French Open
11/19/2009 Twitter updates their privacy policy to include geotagging Open
11/19/2009 Twitter releases the Geotagging API Open
11/19/2009 Twitter evolves from What are you Doing? to What's Happening? Open
11/24/2009 Biz Stone said on Tuesday that it's looking to add to the stable. There aren't any specific targets yet -- at least none revealed -- and Twitter is keeping its options open. The likely pool of potential acquisitions consists of third-party Twitter application developers, which is largely responsible for the micro-blogging service's growth in popularity. Open
11/24/2009 Biz Stone: For Twitter, acquisitions in the third-party application space are a natural fit. Not only are the tools related to the core Twitter service, they could help the company recapture the 70% of its users that generally have no interaction with Twitter.com. Open
11/24/2009 Biz Stone: 2010 is really going to be the revenue year. I don't know if we're going to be profitable, but we have plenty of time Open
11/24/2009 Twitter still faces the gap between users who come to the site and those who do not. If it can increase the percentage of users that interact with the website directly, revenue would increase under an ad-based model Open
11/24/2009 Biz Stone: Acquisitions would be financed with capital held by Twitter, which has plenty of money in the bank Open
11/24/2009 Twitter isn't rushing to an initial public offering. Stone said it's exploring alternatives to this route. "We are definitely not interested in selling the company," he said and added, "If an IPO's the only thing, then sure. But if there is some other way then that would be great too. Maybe some other new way will emerge." Open
11/29/2009 Techcrunch: Twitter is choking FriendFeed to death Open
Dec 2009
12/03/2009 Twitter has an active developer community, using our APIs to create fantastically innovative apps Open
12/03/2009 Twitter mobile team builds a brand new mobile web client from scratch, using only the Twitter API Open
12/07/2009 Citysearch has integrated Twitter into their service so local businesses can display Tweets right within their Citysearch profile Open
12/09/2009 Twitter announces Chirp, the official Twitter developer conference Open
12/09/2009 ZDNet: Twitter has become a big sentiment indicator for companies looking to connect with customers and drive sales. Open
12/10/2009 Twitter is available in Italian Open
12/14/2009 Twitter launches eveloper preview of the Contributor API Open
12/14/2009 Twitter is beta testing a feature called 'Contributors' that enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account Open
12/17/2009 Marco at Tumblr says that he was inspired by the seriously clever use of the Twitter API by WordPress. Of course I was too. When they came out with it I wondered out loud if the Twitter API is now an open standard. Open
12/17/2009 Dave Winer: Discusses Twitter as an open standard Open
12/17/2009 Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised Open
12/17/2009 Twitter is now available in German Open
12/17/2009 3 Indonesia and O2 Ireland have both made the Twitter SMS service available to their subscribers without any additional fees Open
12/21/2009 Carnage4Life talks about Twitter as a de facto standard for use in microblogging Open
12/21/2009 Twitter API Is Becoming Far More than Just an API for Twitter Open
12/22/2009 Twitter launches SMS in Australia with Telestra Open
12/22/2009 Twitter launches SMS in Australia with Telestra Open
12/23/2009 Twitter acquires Mixer Labs, creators of GeoAPI Open
12/28/2009 The Sunday New York Times publishes Twitter's look back at 2009 Open
12/29/2009 Marshall Kirkpatrick: One of the best things about Twitter is its wildly creative ecosystem of applications built by people outside the company. Open
12/29/2009 Loic Le Meur: The increased API limits allow apps to come up with new interaction models for Twitter, and also to catch up on all the new features Twitter added (new RTs, lists), which couldn't be supported properly with 150 requests per hour. Open
12/29/2009 Kevin Marshal: The 150 per hour limit in conjunction with various API features (for example, the social graph API) makes it very difficult to pull off some more advanced features I would like to build. Open
12/29/2009 "This may sound counter-intuitive as a starving entrepreneur," he told us, "but the best guarantee the API will stay open and available is if Twitter makes money from it." Open
12/29/2009 "It gives developers the chance to move from being charity-cases to paying customers, and so gives Twitter a lot more reasons to listen to what we want. Anyone who wants to deal with the flood of data from the firehose already has to invest in some beefy hardware, (my server and bandwidth bills are thousands of dollars a month) so reasonable fees from Twitter shouldn't raise the barrier to entry by much." Open
2010
Jan 2010
01/05/2010 Geo tag queries now available in the Twitter Streaming API Open
01/05/2010 Twitter Streaming API goes full production Open
01/05/2010 Twitter is responding to periods of elevated 503s Open
01/26/2010 Working through some bumps with the Local Trends API release Open
01/26/2010 Local Trends API is launched Open
01/27/2010 Tweet delivery to following timelines delayed Open
01/27/2010 There are more than fifty thousand registered applications on the Twitter platform Open
01/27/2010 Twitter: Applications represent the creativity, ingenuity, and talent of a growing number of developers and companies building innovative new ways to interact with the Twitter information network Open
01/27/2010 Twitter announces the first ever official Twitter conference especially for developers called Chirp Open
01/28/2010 Streaming API tweet volume very low Open
Feb 2010
02/09/2010 Twitter discusses the anatomy of the fail whale Open
02/22/2010 Streaming API production connection quiescence issue Open
02/22/2010 Twitter is seeing 50 million tweets per day Open
02/23/2010 Twitter and Yahoo struck a content-sharing deal Open
02/23/2010 Twitter announces firehose partnership with Yahoo Open
02/23/2010 Twitter creates an open source directory for the entire company Open
02/23/2010 Twitter showcases to engineering blog Open
02/24/2010 Twitter hires @episod as the first developer advocate Open
Mar 2010
03/01/2010 Twitter announces firehose partnerships with Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn Search Open
03/01/2010 Multi firehose partner announcment at Mashable Open
03/01/2010 Multi Firehose partner announcment on ReadWriteWeb Open
03/01/2010 CrowdEye’s Ken Moss had a more personal response, saying he was grateful Twitter delivered on relationships with developers after it had previously shown preferential treatment to paying companies. Open
03/01/2010 GigaOm: Twitter isn’t formalizing these relationships out of the good of its heart; it’s gearing up for a major monetization effort and will clearly expect developers to contribute a tithing. It’s in the company’s best interest for its developers to grow the ecosystem and contribute back. Open
03/09/2010 Twitter launches a new service to protect users from phishing attacks Open
03/18/2010 Twitter releases a new API, who has a tweet been retweeted by Open
03/22/2010 Twitter releases information to prepare developers for HTTP Content-Type headers for the OAuth Open
03/23/2010 Twitter is finding success battling Twitter SPAM Open
03/26/2010 Twitter has reached the scalability limit of our current tweet ID generation scheme Open
03/26/2010 Twitter educates uses about phishing sams Open
03/30/2010 Twitter talks about their testing using Unicorn, a new ruby server Open
03/31/2010 Twitter announces the first ever Twitter conference, Chirp Open
Apr 2010
04/01/2010 The beta for popular tweets in search results is rolling out Open
04/01/2010 Twitter discusses Timeboxing, their tequnique for setting timeouts on local computation Open
04/06/2010 Twitter discusses their use of Gizzard, a framework for creating distributed datastores Open
04/07/2010 Some places Fred Wilson thinks we might see killer Twitter apps emerge: Social Gaming, Verticals, Enterprise, Discovery and Analytics. Open
04/07/2010 Twitter is hosting its first developers conference, Chirp, in San Francisco next week Open
04/07/2010 Twitter is a global platform, the 33rd largest in the world according to Comscore, with almost 70mm uvs worldwide in February Open
04/08/2010 Loic Le Meur: Twitter has been a great partner and helped us whenever we have needed help. Most of our growth is coming from Twitter and we are confident our partnership with our friends at Twitter will keep being strong, trustful and long term, no doubts about it. At the same time, we have been competing with Twitter itself since day one, with their own client twitter.com by either taking it to other platforms or helping our users managing their Twitter stream in a different way. Open
04/08/2010 Loic Le Meur: It would be very dangerous for anyone to be relying 100% on Twitter. Open
04/08/2010 Loic Le Meur: Twitter is doing a pretty good job at trying to treat everyone equally with the way they opened their mini firehose for example Open
04/08/2010 Loic Le Meur: What I would really hate would be that Twitter would keep internal APIs for internal clients without giving the same opportunity to the ecosystem and at the same moment they are available for their internal team. Open
04/08/2010 Twitter's website is available in six languages Open
04/08/2010 Twitter showcases their use of Hadoop at Twitter Open
04/09/2010 Twitter acquires Atebits, maker of Tweetie Open
04/09/2010 Nilay Patel: Wow, weird coincidence! a Twitter board member blogged about killing twitter apps the same week Twitter released/bought 2 clients! Engadget editor Nilay Patel said that Twitter buying Tweetie was roughly equivalent to Microsoft building it’s own WP7 phone – bye bye, ecosystem. Open
04/09/2010 Ev Williams also said that this process was inevitable, and suggested that the company might buy certain apps, and others it might simply compete with. Open
04/09/2010 There’s some misunderstanding around platforms,” he said. “There’s both a natural win-win relationship between a platform provider and third-party developers, and there’s a natural tension.” He added that there are “tons of opportunities created by the Twitter platform, and things that people will probably be disappointed if they invest in. It’s a question of what should be left up to the ecosystem and what should be created on the platform. Open
04/12/2010 Yahoo is releasing a new service: Firehose, a real-time, searchable index of social content aggregated from around the web. Open
04/13/2010 Twitter has a stubborn insistence on a slow and thoughtful approach to monetization Open
04/13/2010 Stephen Colbert hits home runs with lines like, So, I assume that 'Biz' in 'Biz Stone' does not stand for 'Business Model' Open
04/13/2010 Twitter introduces Promoted Tweets Open
04/14/2010 Google is actively building on Twitter Open
04/14/2010 Twitter donates access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research Open
04/14/2010 Evan Williams: There is an Android app in the works Open
04/14/2010 Chirp: The team wants to get the firehose to as many people as possible; they are hiring more people to help ramp that up. Open
04/14/2010 Ryan Sarver: We already have a geocode hose, but most people don’t know about it. It specifically takes only geocoded tweets. Open
04/14/2010 Ryan Sarver: Twitter is working on a Twitter AI related to rich media, videos and photos Open
04/14/2010 We basically merged with Summize and became Twitter Search Open
04/14/2010 Ryan Sarver: We want to find better ways to highlight amazing apps and amazing developers. Dev.Twitter.com is one big piece of this. We also want to do smaller versions of Twitter.com Open
04/14/2010 Ryan Sarver: We want to do more town halls on a quarterly basis. We want to give certainty on the big projects every quarter. Open
04/14/2010 Ryan Sarver: For me, it’s that we need to improve communication. We need to externally better, maybe even hiring people who will communicate to the community better Open
04/15/2010 @trock What about Android App? Yes. Twitter has app in the works. Bought from ecosystem, build self. Can't say says @ev Open
04/15/2010 How do we access firehouse? We had to work on the framework, test it out. And we don't have a large team…so there are backlogs. Just emails them. Currently a manual process and they want to make as efficient as possible. They aren't real clear about who to email. Open
04/15/2010 Twitter is building different levels of participation for accessing the firehouse. We have onramps, developer level of accounts. Smaller portions of the firehouse give you enough to access insights. Open
04/15/2010 7:35 - Twitters goal is to get firehouse to as many people as they can. They want to get to developers in garages and to Google. This isn't a big profit making scheme. They want as much innovation on this as possible. Its complex to do so. Open
04/15/2010 Is Geo going to be in the firehouse. yes we have a geo firehouse now. Open
04/15/2010 Is twitter going to host rich media? We haven't made a decision. We love that we don't have to host media. But we think there is a user experience problem. Photos is a mainstream way of sharing information. Twitter thinks it can be a lot easier. Open
04/15/2010 @ryansarver They are working on rich media APIs to broker media messages. Its on the road map. Open
04/15/2010 @ev references Friendfeed in ecosystem and becoming a competitor Open
04/15/2010 Twitter used Chirp to provide clarity on where they are going to reassure investors. Dick feels the more they clarify what they are doing, the more it will encourage investment. Open
04/15/2010 Acquiring Tweetie then doing an event didn't make the best headline, but was a good time. so they can discuss at Chirp Open
04/15/2010 What is the future of a Twitter app? There are too many ways to categorize a twitter app. Let's look at categories. Tweetdeck has catered to power users. CoTweet focused on business audience at met their needs. Analtyics is next. Even if we do it….there is still room. Open
04/15/2010 22:09 - @biz is excited about new apps, that they couldn't have thought of. That what Twitter has been all about. Open
04/15/2010 Cool that are all these features. Will their be fair access? Isn't it unequal because Twitter ecosystem is bigger. User streams will be in ecosystem before we get it. They are enabling developers in way that they aren't. Open
04/15/2010 Are URL shorteners going to be available for everyone? Probably not. They are using a link shortener for spam and link bait defense. They think its dumb that you get turned away because of link. They are giving choice, to use Twitters or others. Open
04/15/2010 Twitter is less than 200 employees. Open
04/15/2010 What is the path to be acquired by TWitter. Build a great product. summize and values of N were both outside the valley and built great things. Open
04/15/2010 Whats is the path to featured / promoted apps. There were a time where cool things are going on, but bad ways to show this. They did have an algorithmmic way to showcase great apps. Now people can use promoted tweets to do that. Open
04/15/2010 You got a lot of really cool stuff being built in the ecosystem. We don't know….and we'll learn. App friction is something that we see. People that use API apps are more engaged. 50% of activity is API. 50% of users use only the web site. That tells Twitter they can do better. It tells Twitter that they should be telling where to find apps. Open
04/15/2010 How are you guys going to give more clarity on the roadmap? They want to do this downhill updates quarterly. Because things change week by week, its hard to give certainty. But they do want to do that on the big projects. Open
04/15/2010 Developer previews are a way of showing roadmap. They think of every future with devs involved and API isn't an after thought. So they pre-announce things on the dev list. Open
04/15/2010 They are moving m.Twitter.com off the core architecture and making it use the API, and plan on doing that with twitter.com. Its their way of hardening the API technology and using exactly what developers use. Open
04/15/2010 How does Twitter make decisions about who gets early access to Twitter features? They have a trusted set of developers who they can do early release. They are working on better process. Open
04/15/2010 What did you learn over the last couple weeks? We need to improve communication. Hire people who will communicate better. If people to don't have visibility, its a natural reaction to think something nefarious is going on. While there is some natural tension between Twitter and the ecosystem, the reality is Twitter is overwhelmed and didn't communicate better. Open
04/15/2010 Twitter is finally getting to the point where they can build what they've been talking about doing. Open
04/15/2010 Twazzup launches Twazzup Insights, a real-time Twitter analytics service Open
04/16/2010 Twitter provides an early look at Annotations Open
04/17/2010 That, to me, is the key issue. Twitter is now making a new set of promises to developers. Will they break that promise too in a year or two? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Halstead says in the video that the opportunity is too large to ignore, damn the risks. Perhaps that’s so. But it seems like the best developers may choose to spend their time on something else, where they don’t run the risk of Twitter changing their mind again. Open
04/17/2010 Seesmic, TweetMeme Say Twitter Ecosystem Is Just Fine Open
04/17/2010 Most developers we’ve spoken with are upset, and say that Twitter gave them guidance that they wouldn’t compete with them. And in the past Twitter has been consistent in saying that they want to provide the plumbing for the Twitter ecosystem. Now it’s quite clear that they want to build on top of that plumbing, too. Open
04/17/2010 Halstead seems unworried by the changes. He says that new features in Twitter’s API will allow new types of apps to be built by third parties, and the existing stuff isn’t as relevant (tell that to the guys who’ve just been hit). And his Tweetmeme app isn’t in much danger because he has actual code on tens of thousands of websites. Even if Twitter competed directly, it would be hard to get publishers to replace that code. Open
04/17/2010 My chief rebuttal to Halstead is that the new API features, such as geo, are great. But developers building around those features are simply providing the research & development effort to figure out what works. Once they do, Twitter will call them hole fillers and compete directly. Open
04/17/2010 John Borthwick has been the most effective at communicating the problem from the developer standpoint. Developers need to know the rules that Twitter is playing by. Calling something a hole filler after the fact isn’t reasonable. Open
04/19/2010 Logical AND now supported in the streaming API filter endpoint Open
04/19/2010 User Streams Preview now available to all developers Open
04/20/2010 Twitter announces Twurl, an OAuth-enabled curl client for the Twitter API Open
04/20/2010 Streaming API and Search are currently behind Open
04/20/2010 Twitter talks about issues and mysteries they face using memcache Open
04/21/2010 Twitter – API = Nothing Open
04/23/2010 Twitter's 140 character limit was designed specifically to allow for any tweet to be read in its entirety whether you're using a rudimentary mobile phone, or a more sophisticated Internet enabled device Open
04/23/2010 Twitter acquires Cloudhopper Open
04/27/2010 Twitter revies OAuth docs to assist transition from basic auth to OAuth Open
04/27/2010 9 weeks to go until basic auth shutdown on the Twitter API Open
04/30/2010 Twitter for Android is available in Android Market Open
May 2010
05/03/2010 Twitter talks about their use of FlockDB, a database that stores graph data Open
05/05/2010 Twitter provides resources to help developers switch their app to OAuth Open
05/11/2010 Twitter adds geographic data to Tweets Open
05/14/2010 We are still experiencing latency issues with the API Open
05/14/2010 Twitter encouraging developers to read the Twitter engineering blog to get relevant information impacting developers Open
05/19/2010 Twitter for iPhone and iPod touch is available for free on the iTunes App Store Open
05/19/2010 You don't need a Twitter account to use Twitter for iPhone and iPod Open
05/23/2010 Twitter provides suggestions for developers implementing User Streams Open
05/24/2010 @cdixon: Twitter is like a drunk guy with an uzi killing partners left and right. Expect investment in ecosystem to drop significantly. Open
05/24/2010 Architecting for extensibility Open
05/24/2010 Twitter wants to provide a robust API to the platform’s functionality Open
05/24/2010 Twitter wants to ensure the long-term health and value of the user experience. Open
05/25/2010 Twitter updates API Terms of Service Open
05/26/2010 Twitter launches a new support center Open
Jun 2010
06/01/2010 Twitter announces work on Snowflake, a new way to generate unique ID numbers for Tweets Open
06/02/2010 Twitter is testing Annotations on the Streaming API Open
06/03/2010 GigaOm: In the last two months, a controversy has broken out between the startup of the moment, Twitter, and its ecosystem. Open
06/03/2010 Some of its actions — such as acquiring Tweetie (a mobile client that has since been rebranded as Twitter for the iPhone), coupled with its recent decision to impose limitations on companies building ad-related businesses on Twitter — have thrown everyone into a tizzy. Open
06/03/2010 Chris Dixon: “Twitter is like a drunk guy with an uzi killing partners left and right,” he recently tweeted. “Expect investment in ecosystem to drop significantly.” Open
06/03/2010 Chris Dixon: A bunch of investors have told me recently there is no way they’d invest in Twitter ecosystem now,” he later added. To which Twitter COO Dick Costolo responded by saying, “I’m hearing *precisely* the opposite. Fortunately, time will soon tell which of us is getting bad information. Open
06/03/2010 Investor: Twitter is a small company that can’t do much on its own, so there’s still room for developers. Open
06/03/2010 Investor: One needs to wait until Twitter becomes profitable before investing in its ecosystem since that’s the point at which the company will likely embrace it. Open
06/03/2010 Om Malik: If there’s one criticism I have about Twitter, it’s that it’s failed to be clear in its communications with the developer community. The company doesn’t have a business ecosystem yet, so until it does, it needs to nurture its developer ecosystem. In particular, it needs a way to encourage developers to embed Twitter into their products. Open
06/07/2010 Twitter asks if any developers wants to showcase their mac-based app at our WWDC Meetup Open
06/08/2010 By wrapping URLs in short URLs Twitter hopes to eventually provide all developers with aggregate usage data around your applications such as the number of clicks people make on URLs Open
06/08/2010 Twitter is working to protect users against phishing and other malicious attacks by wrapping all URLs in t.co short domains Open
06/08/2010 Site and API Availability Issues Open
06/08/2010 Twitter states they want to provide link shortening across all types of messages and platforms Open
06/10/2010 Twitter acquires Smallthought Systems Open
06/11/2010 Twitter releases resources on switching to OAuth Open
06/11/2010 30 day notification of switching to OAuth Open
06/11/2010 High Error Rate on Twitter.com Open
06/11/2010 Second announcement by Twitter about the switch requiring all Twitter apps to use OAuth by June 30th, 2010 Open
06/13/2010 Bursts of Errors Open
06/13/2010 Site-wide availability issues Open
06/13/2010 Jive Software buys into the Twitter firehose Open
06/14/2010 Site Availability Issues Open
06/14/2010 Twitter Places is baked into the Twitter API platform Open
06/14/2010 Bursts of Elevated Errors Open
06/14/2010 Twitter announces Twitter Places via the website, mobile app and API Open
06/15/2010 Temporarily Missing Tweets Open
06/15/2010 High Error Rate on Twitter.com Open
06/15/2010 Twitter is dealing with stability issues due to unexpected issues and unprecedented spikes in activity Open
06/16/2010 High Error Rate on Twitter.com Open
06/16/2010 Twitter showcases the @kosmix TweetBeat World Cup site Open
06/17/2010 Timeline updates and streaming fell behind real-time Open
06/19/2010 Moderate Error Rate on Twitter.com Open
06/21/2010 High Error Rate on Twitter.com Open
06/22/2010 Periodic high rates of errors on Twitter.com Open
06/22/2010 Russian President Medvedev stops by Twitter offices in San Francisco Open
06/23/2010 Dealing with high whales (errors) as the result of high load Open
06/23/2010 Periodic high rates of errors on Twitter.com Open
06/24/2010 Twitter announces that the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an inquiry into Twitter's security practices due to previous attacks Open
06/24/2010 Twitter reaches agreement with the FTC over their security practices Open
06/29/2010 Temporarily lowering the API rate-limit to 125 from 175 Open
06/30/2010 Twitter has now slashed the API rates for developers in half Open
06/30/2010 Twitter has now slashed the API rates for developers in half. Open
06/30/2010 default API rate limit will go down from 350 to 175 requests per hour Open
Jul 2010
07/02/2010 Elevated Error Rates Open
07/02/2010 Three months after Twitter’s first developer conference, Twitter’s head of platform Ryan Sarver thinks the company’s relationship with its ecosystem is back on track Open
07/02/2010 At the time, the Chirp event had the effect of focusing developer criticism and anger, especially over Twitter’s moves to compete with its ecosystem by buying the iPhone client Tweetie, but Sarver said he was happy with the “pivotal” event for the opportunity to establish a precedent for being open with developers. Open
07/02/2010 A pre-announced “Places” feature turned out to be less of a “Foursquare killer” and more of a way of focusing activity around a certain geographical area Open
07/02/2010 Ryan Sarver said in addition to the announced feature additions, the next big thing he wants to offer developers is solid opportunities to succeed as businesses. That will consist of a couple to-do items Open
07/02/2010 The highly anticipated capability to add annotations to tweets is due in the second quarter. Open
07/02/2010 A new infrastructure for what’s called “user streams” is behind schedule, but promises to make tweets and other actions get pushed out in real-time Open
07/02/2010 GigaOm: Some investors and entrepreneurs are nervous about the uncertainties associated with building on Twitter Open
07/02/2010 VP product Jason Goldman tried to explain Twitter’s point of view: “It’s not altruistic,” he said. “We depend on the ecosystem for our success.” Goldman said the Twitter management has committed to openness in planning, rules, and access to data for both developers and users. Open
07/02/2010 GigaOm: has made efforts to include select developers in its product testing, and allowed others to pay for better access to its data. Open
07/02/2010 Twitter spokesperson said the number is actually 15 to 20 companies now have access to the Twitter Firehose — the premium metered product of a real-time stream of all public Tweets. Open
07/02/2010 While the Firehose was first doled out in the name of real-time search, Sarver said today 10 to 12 of the companies using it are in search, and the others do a variety of things — for instance, Jive uses the Firehose for social business software. Open
07/05/2010 Missing @ Replies Open
07/05/2010 Mobile Website Issues Open
07/06/2010 User Streams Preview Open
07/07/2010 Twitter has seen its search volume climb by more than 30 percent in the past few months alone, with over 800 million search queries being handled every day Open
07/07/2010 The vast majority of Twitter’s search comes through API calls from various clients and services Open
07/09/2010 Twitter talks about their use of Cassandra at Twitter Open
07/13/2010 SSL Issue Open
07/15/2010 During the final of the 2010 World Cup, people from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages Open
07/15/2010 At the moment of the winning goal in the 2010 World Cup, people from 81 countries tweeted in 23 different languages Open
07/15/2010 Spains winning goal in the final at the 2010 World Cup scored a 3,051 Tweets per Second (TPS) Open
07/15/2010 Twitter talks about Murder, a datacenter code deployment system using BitTorrent Open
07/16/2010 Twitter turns down rate limit on Spritzer, now sampling at a rate of 1% rather than 5% of total Firehose output Open
07/19/2010 Issues with profile updates & other operations is also crippling the OAuth handshake process Open
07/19/2010 Twitter Help Center Temporarily Down Open
07/21/2010 Twitter discusses the reliability of the Twitter platform Open
07/21/2010 Twitter announces their new data center in the Salt Lake City area Open
07/21/2010 Twitter talks about a platform performance update Open
07/27/2010 SSL Certificate Errors Open
07/28/2010 Limited User Streams testing period for desktop apps Open
07/29/2010 There are 26 days left to migrate from basic auth to OAuth Open
07/30/2010 Elevated Error Rate on the API Open
Aug 2010
08/09/2010 PeopleBrowsr announces official firehose agreement with Twitter Open
08/12/2010 Twitter introduces the Tweet Button Open
08/12/2010 Twitter announces an embeddable Tweet Button to enable Tweeting from any website Open
08/20/2010 Twitter announces a drag and drop Twitter bookmarklet, allowing tweeting from any page Open
08/21/2010 Mentions Timeline Frozen Open
08/30/2010 Recently we dropped the Gardenhose sample rate down from roughly 15% to roughly 5% of all public statuses in response to a capacity limitation. We've added considerable bandwidth headroom to the stream.twitter.com cluster, and we've provisionally increased the sample to roughly 10%. As documented since the release of the sampled endpoint, this rate is subject to continuous and unannounced change. Open
08/30/2010 Twitter posts information educating developers about transition to OAuth Open
08/30/2010 A Beta version of Site Streams is available Open
08/30/2010 Developers can apply for beta access to Site Streams API Open
08/30/2010 Public announcement letting users know that oAuth will be required for all applications Open
08/31/2010 The Twitter API no longer supports basic auth Open
Sep 2010
09/01/2010 Potential Errors Due to Maintenance Open
09/01/2010 Log-in issues for users of some mobile clients Open
09/01/2010 Twitter announces integrated Tweeting on the iPad Open
09/02/2010 There are now 300,000 registered OAuth applications on Twitter Open
09/02/2010 Open
09/02/2010 Twitter is making TWitter easier by taking control over client development Open
09/03/2010 Stale search results Open
09/03/2010 Investigating invalid responses from the API Open
09/13/2010 HTTP and Basic Auth removed for User Streams API Open
09/13/2010 Twitter puts Version in User Agent of the User Streams API Open
09/13/2010 Twitter limits connection limits and provides error codes for applications that are over limit Open
09/20/2010 Twitter.com retrieves data from the same API endpoints that the mobile site, apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and every thirid-party application use Open
09/21/2010 XSS attack identified and patched Open
09/21/2010 Twitter experiences a cross-site scripting(XSS) exploit Open
09/22/2010 When creating #newtwitter the value of this was clear. A heightened level of visibility & communication with our engineers enabled us to reproduce and fix many of the API bugs you’ve encountered and reported to us. #newtwitter makes it easier for us to concretely develop new API features, giving other teams at Twitter an agile environment to experiment with new ideas Open
09/22/2010 With #newtwitter using the API all users will become API consumers, providing valuable feedback about issues they encounter, helping us isolate and fix problems that are found Open
09/26/2010 A malicious link is making the rounds that will post a tweet to your account Open
09/28/2010 User Streams goes Production Open
09/30/2010 Our team's mission is to increase productivity and transparency throughout the company. We increase productivity by streamlining processes and automating tasks. We increase transparency by building tools and frameworks that allow employees to discover, and be notified of, relevant information in real time. Many companies use the term "transparency" when discussing their company culture, but very few put the right pieces in place to ensure that a transparent environment can be established without exposing too much information. Twitter invests heavily in my team so that we can build the infrastructure to ensure a healthy balance. Open
Oct 2010
10/03/2010 Access to Twitter.com limited because it now uses the API as well Open
10/04/2010 Experiencing high error rates Open
10/04/2010 90 Million Tweets per Day Sent Open
10/04/2010 COO Dick Costolo becomes CEO Open
10/04/2010 Twitter launches Promoted Accounts Open
10/05/2010 Resolved a bandwidth issue on stream.twitter.com endpoint of the Streaming API Open
10/06/2010 Experiencing elevated error rates Open
10/06/2010 Twitter launches a new search architecture Open
10/07/2010 Issue Posting New Tweets Open
10/11/2010 Experiencing elevated error rates Open
10/22/2010 Twitter holds their first internal Hack Week, where they'll be building things that are separate from their normal day to day work Open
10/24/2010 Experiencing elevated error rates Open
10/25/2010 JSON responses from the Search API now contain string representations of IDs Open
10/28/2010 Twitter updates the logo, buttons and widgets developers can use Open
10/28/2010 Twitter updates the logo, buttons and widgets developers can use Open
10/28/2010 Twitter releases client for Windows Phone 7 Open
10/28/2010 Twitter uses open-source Tweet Sharp as the foundation for their App Open
10/28/2010 API access is set at 100 API calls per hour Open
10/29/2010 Twitter educates users about using media in their Tweets Open
Nov 2010
11/01/2010 Twitter is beginning to test syndication of Promoted Tweets in user timelines Open
11/03/2010 Twitter releases an updated version of Twitter for Android Open
11/07/2010 Some users are seeing a time delivery gap of about 5 hours Open
11/07/2010 Some timelines are experiencing a one-hour delay Open
11/08/2010 XML support on Streaming API will be deprecated in 30 days Open
11/08/2010 Experiencing elevated error rates Open
11/12/2010 Why the Twitter Firehose matters to you Open
11/13/2010 Some tweets were delayed by a few minutes on Streaming and Search Open
11/17/2010 What are your plans for 2011? A: Job number one remains stability and hiring engineers to do an incredible job at keeping the service reliable. Open
11/17/2010 Growth, reliability and another big thing is the growth of the company itself and making sure that we stand on the right track in regards to company culture, making people happy. Open
11/17/2010 Twitter has 175 million registered accounts Open
11/17/2010 Gnip: Gnip and Twitter have partnered to make Twitter data commercially available through Gnip’s Social Media API. Open
11/17/2010 Gnip: Twitter Halfhose. This volume-based feed is comprised of 50% of the full firehose. Open
11/17/2010 Gnip: Twitter Mentionhose. This coverage-based feed provides the realtime stream of all Tweets that mention a user, including @replies and retweets. Open
11/17/2010 Gnip: Twitter Decahose. This volume-based product is comprised of 10% of the full firehose. Open
11/17/2010 Twitter announces a partnership with Gnip to develop and market data products specifically for these analysis and non-display companies. Gnip will sublicense access to our public Tweets to developers interested in analyzing large amounts of Twitter data Open
11/17/2010 Companies and developers are encouraged to begin development with these free APIs, available at http://dev.twitter.com/pages/streaming_api Open
11/17/2010 Twitter stops offering elevated access Open
11/17/2010 All Elevated access will be handled through Gnip Open
11/17/2010 Twitter no longer white lists Open
11/17/2010 GigaOm: Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams admitted today that the company “screwed up” its relationship with third-party developers, and says that happened mostly because the startup didn’t originally plan to become a platform company. Open
11/17/2010 GigaOm: Now that it’s actually trying to be a platform, Williams — who has taken over the company’s product development strategy — says that Twitter will continue to try to provide opportunities for developers, but isn’t ruling out moving into any current Twitter-related service or feature area, with the possible exception of gaming Open
11/17/2010 Dick Costolo: Twitter originally released an API — which allows developers to integrate their apps and services with the network — because “we thought it would be neat,” and lots of other web companies had them. But as the company grew, it realized that it needed to fill some of the holes in its feature set, and that led to the purchase of Tweetie and triggered some bad feeling in the developer community. “We’ve learned a lot about having an ecosystem and working with third-party developers and we’ve screwed up a lot of that,” he said. Open
11/17/2010 Evan Williams: Said the company wants to ensure the platform it’s building also has plenty of opportunities for outside companies and startups. “We need to keep evolving Twitter, but we also need to keep providing new opportunities for developers" Open
11/17/2010 Williams also said the demand for the company’s ad-related services — such as “promoted tweets” and “promoted trends” — has been far greater than the startup has been able to satisfy, and most of the advertisers who’ve tried these features have come back again. Open
11/17/2010 Our biggest challenge is that there’s been way too much demand for of ads. That’s why Twitter’s ramping up its sales team. Open
11/17/2010 Twitter is discussing Promoted Trends and some of the advertising campaigns brands the company is initiating. Open
11/17/2010 Evan Williams discusses resonance, the algorithm the company uses to figure out whether a promoted tweet or trend stays up based on engagement and other metrics. Open
11/17/2010 Evan : Williams is discussing the partnership it announced today with Gnip surrounding its firehose of data. The people that want the firehose are people looking at trends. The point was never about making money, he says, but about distribution of tweets, which he thinks is a good thing. Open
11/17/2010 Evan : Williams is discussing the partnership it announced today with Gnip surrounding its firehose of data. The people that want the firehose are people looking at trends. The point was never about making money, he says, but about distribution of tweets, which he thinks is a good thing Open
11/17/2010 Williams: “We have a reputation score with every user.” We speculate that if Twitter ever makes those scores public, many social media analytics startups (such as Klout) will suffer as a result. Open
11/17/2010 Evan Williams is discussing how Twitter couldn’t be a modern mobile company without its own apps Open
11/17/2010 Evan Williams discusses how Twitter couldn’t be a modern mobile company without its own apps Open
11/17/2010 Twitter isn’t a fully baked platform yet, but aspires it to be one Open
11/18/2010 Biggest challenge for promoted Tweets, Accounts or Trends is the demand Open
11/18/2010 Access to TWitter firehouse is a good revenue stream Open
11/18/2010 Announced partnerships at 2009 (Microsoft & Google) Later added Yahoo Open
11/18/2010 The original goal of Firehose was not revenue, it was distribution Open
11/18/2010 People wanted data to get at data for big data purposes. So they partnered with Gnip to resell the 1/2 firehouse Open
11/18/2010 Twitter is in transition. In the history of Twitter they spent very little time improving the product. Because they spent all their time scaling, ramping up team. Also why they didn't launch any monetization efforts. So they finally had time to do improvements. Open
11/18/2010 Because Twitter has shifted. Because you have monetization strategy. Because you chose a decentralized platform community, they are having to take ownership of some of the pieces of the ecosystem clients, buttons. Open
11/18/2010 We screwed up a lot of that. We didn't set out to be a platform company. We added the API because we thought it would be neat. But thats different than developing a platform. You have to think of ways to make sure other people are successful and have opportunities. There are often tension between platforms and devs. We aspire to be a platform, but haven't done that yet. Open
11/18/2010 We launched Twitter as a Model T. It was very basic. It was popular and got people excited. Then this swarm of developers came in and helped it in the aftermarket. Then all of Twitter's efforts went into architecture Open
11/18/2010 At first they looked to developers to add these new features. They realized that wasn't really serving users, and they were going to get beat in the market. Open
11/18/2010 Why they bought Tweetie. Users weren't finding the best apps because they couldn't find apps. They couldn't be a modern Internet company without mobile app. Open
11/18/2010 People want to know whats safe to build. They announced analytics. Open
11/18/2010 Are photos safe? I don't know. Open
11/18/2010 We have a lot of money in the bank Open
11/18/2010 Ben Parr asking about Chris Dixon saying Twitter was Nuking ecosystem. TWitter launched some basic analytics. Twitter needs to keep adding to twitter and improving. They need to add more opportunities for developers to add value. Twitter hasn't built a great platform. Since we moved into mobile client space our mobile usage has exploded. We will add things for developers, but we aren't going to make our product worst so developers have things to do. Open
11/18/2010 CAn you tell us anything on your near roadmap? We are working on relevance to give people the most valuable information to them. To figure out relevance in real-time is non trivial. Open
11/27/2010 Some users are missing tweets Open
11/27/2010 High latency and other stability issues on the Streaming APIs Open
11/30/2010 Advanced search operators like geo, source, and lang are not functioning properly via the API Open
Dec 2010
12/01/2010 Direct message delivery problem Open
12/08/2010 Twitter announces several new geo data partners: A&E Television Networks and History, Apontador, CityGrid Media, DotMenu/Allmenus, Gowalla, Infogroup, Localeze, Maponics, OpenTable, TomTom, Wcities, Yellow Pages Group (Canada), and Zagat Open
12/09/2010 Partial Tweet loss in Search and Streaming Open
12/15/2010 Twitter launches business.twitter.com, a site that provides information for small business to use Twitter effectively. Open
12/15/2010 Twitter launches business.twitter.com, a site that provides information for small business to use Twitter effectively Open
12/15/2010 Twitter has 350 employees Open
12/15/2010 Twitter adds significant new round of funding with investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Open
12/15/2010 2010 was one of the most meaningful years since Twitter, Inc. was founded in 2007 Open
12/18/2010 Streaming API Outage Open
12/21/2010 Twitter acquires Fluther Open
12/22/2010 Twitter downtime - Twitter is currently down Open
2011
Jan 2011
01/06/2011 Record number of 6,939 Tweets sent per second (TPS) sent just four seconds after midnight in Japan Open
01/06/2011 Twitter launches a Twitter client for the Mac Open
01/06/2011 Twitter Mac App is three times faster than its original version that was previously called Tweetie for Mac Open
01/11/2011 Site availability issues Open
01/27/2011 Tweet Delivery Delays Open
01/28/2011 Stability issues Open
Feb 2011
02/02/2011 AllThingsD: Twitter data is a hot commodity for all sorts of projects, including search, brand monitoring and customer relationship management. But pricing and access to its data is not something the company has prioritized. Open
02/02/2011 AllThingsD: As for the actual Twitter users slaving away to produce those 140 character updates? No, they don’t get a cut. Open
02/09/2011 The superbowl set 4,064 Tweets per second (TPS) – the highest TPS for any sporting event Open
02/10/2011 Twitter issues an update on whitelisting Open
02/11/2011 Twitter launches a new version of Twitter for Android Open
02/11/2011 Twitter will no longer grant whitelisting requests. Open
02/11/2011 UberMedia acquires Tweetdeck Open
02/11/2011 This deal follows Gross’ company scooping up UberTwitter last month — a popular Twitter client for both BlackBerry and iPhone devices. Open
02/14/2011 Bill Gross’s company, UberMedia, has gotten $17.5 million in funding from some prominent VC firms, including Accel Partners and Index Ventures. Open
02/14/2011 the past few months, Tweetup was renamed UberMedia and started buying up Twitter clients: First it acquired UberTwitter, a popular mobile client; then it bought Echofon, then it bought a “social news” service called Mixx. Open
02/14/2011 Is UberMedia on a Collision Course With Twitter? Open
02/14/2011 Twitter introduces the Twitter Translation Center, allowing Twitter to crowdsource translations from our passionate users in order to more quickly launch Twitter in additional languages. Open
02/16/2011 Delayed Tweet Delivery Open
02/18/2011 Experiencing elevated error rates Open
02/18/2011 Twitter has suspended UberTwitter and Twidroyd for violating its policies Open
02/18/2011 GigaOm: When Twitter started buying up applications and clamping down on third-party apps last year, it was obvious that the company was no longer the free-wheeling, “everyone join the party” kind of operation it seemed to be in the early days, when third-party apps were seen as partners who could help the network grow and no one worried about things like trademark infringement (TwitPic and Tweetmeme and other apps and services continue to function without any problems — so far) Open
02/18/2011 GigaOm: Twitter shuts down UberMedia's access for trademark infringement and breaches of the terms of service Open
02/24/2011 Stability issues Open
02/26/2011 Currently experiencing elevated error rates Open
Mar 2011
03/02/2011 Elevated access is granted on a case-by-case basis, & if you need it for non-display purposes, use @gnip Open
03/02/2011 Access to the basic levels are already enabled for users. If you need elevated access, email api@twitter.com - up to ~72hr wait Open
03/03/2011 How Recent Changes to Twitter's Terms of Service Might Hurt Academic Research Open
03/03/2011 Twitter for iPhone is already the third-most popular way to access Twitter (after Twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com) Open
03/03/2011 Twitter updates Twitter for the iPhone Open
03/03/2011 Twitter updates Twitter for the iPad Open
03/11/2011 GigaOm: platform lead Ryan Sarver basically said new Twitter apps are not welcome and existing ones are going to be on a very tight leash. Open
03/11/2011 GigaOm: Instead new developers should consider different opportunities such as building publisher tools, curation applications, real-time data analysis, social CRM services for enterprise clients and the kind of integration that Foursquare and Instagram have included in their apps. Open
03/11/2011 Twitter: For those developers like Ubermedia who continue to put out Twitter clients, Sarver said they will be held to a very high standard as laid out in an updated terms of service agreement. Ubermedia last month had several of its apps including UberTwitter and Twidroyd temporarily shut down for policy violations that stemmed from privacy, monetization and trademark issues. The episode illustrated the hard line Twitter intends to take with client developers. And now with its more explicit roadmap for developers, Twitter is underscoring the risk associated with building a business atop another company’s platform. Open
03/11/2011 Twitter sends an email to the community: consistency and ecosystem opportunities Open
03/11/2011 Slow Searches Open
03/11/2011 consistency and ecosystem opportunities Open
03/11/2011 ur user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions Open
03/11/2011 Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network’s conversations. We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere. Open
03/11/2011 The mainstream consumer client experience. Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets. If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience. In addition, a number of client applications have repeatedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, including our user privacy policy. This demonstrates the risks associated with outsourcing the Twitter user experience to third parties. Twitter has to revoke literally hundreds of API tokens / apps a week as part of our trust and safety efforts, in order to protect the user experience on our platform. Open
03/11/2011 Display of tweets in 3rd-party services. We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are. For example, some developers display “comment”, “like”, or other terms with tweets instead of “follow, favorite, retweet, reply” - thus changing the core functions of a tweet. Open
03/11/2011 Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no. Open
03/11/2011 Publisher tools. Companies such as SocialFlow help publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time. Open
03/11/2011 Curation. Mass Relevance and Sulia provide services for large media brands to select, display, and stream the most interesting and relevant tweets for a breaking news story, topic or event. Open
03/11/2011 Realtime data signals. Hundreds of companies use real-time Twitter data as an input into ranking, ad targeting, or other aspects of enhancing their own core products. Klout is an example of a company which has taken this to the next level by using Twitter data to generate reputation scores for individuals. Similarly, Gnip syndicates Twitter data Open
03/11/2011 Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights. Companies such as HootSuite, CoTweet, Radian6, Seesmic, and Crimson Hexagon help brands, enterprises, and media companies tap into the zeitgeist about their brands on Twitter, and manage relationships with their consumers using Twitter as a medium for interaction. Open
03/11/2011 Value-added content and vertical experiences. Emerging services like Formspring, Foursquare, Instagram, and Quora have built into Twitter by allowing users to share unique and valuable content to their followers, while, in exchange, the services get broader reach, user acquisition, and traffic. Open
03/11/2011 A lot of Twitter’s success is attributable to a diverse ecosystem of more than 750,000 registered apps. We will continue to support this innovation. We are excited to be working with our developer community to create a consistent and innovative experience for the many millions of users who have come to depend on Twitter every day Open
03/11/2011 Dave Winer: If you make a Twitter client, you have a bit of time to get out of that business. If you were thinking about writing one, don't. Open
03/11/2011 Dave Winer: Twitter wants to control how tweets are presented everywhere. That means if you have an app that somehow displays them, you'd better read the new terms of service. You probably aren't allowed to do that anymore.  Open
03/11/2011 Dave Winer: Analytics are OK, for now. Helping big companies manage their brands on Twitter, OK for now. Not clear what els Open
03/12/2011 Helloform: I was confused. I was confused because I remember the early days when there was no such thing as an official client and the web page was pretty bland (or just plain bad). Open
03/12/2011 Helloform: And so knowing a bit of your history, I find myself in the odd position of both loving your service and your people, and feeling like you are betraying what got you where you are today. How many users did you get out of 3rd parties? How many new features did you integrate upstream that were born in 3rd party clients? You are basically biting the hand that fed you for a very long time. Open
03/12/2011 Helloform: I just don’t see this as a time when you can just tell developers you don’t need their clients anymore. Find ways to monetize your service by putting up sensible rules and guidelines, not walls. Open
03/12/2011 Techcrunch provides analysis of Twitters changes to their terms of service Open
03/12/2011 Techcrunch: The Twitter API ToS Changes Open
03/12/2011 Some developers are building buttons, some are data analysis, some are build applications--we need people building at all these levels. Open
03/12/2011 Streaming was born out of seeing how people are using the APIs, and finding better architectural solutions to meet their needs. Open
03/12/2011 Twitter has supported OAuth for about year and half. Open
03/12/2011 We want to be able to evolve the APIs as fast as we can, so sometimes we have to deprecate some APIs. The ecosystem will have to evolve with this. Open
03/12/2011 TweetButton was one of our most successful launches. The ability to provide a simple copy/paste line of code is powerful. Open
03/12/2011 Embeddable tools drive users to central Twitter.com Open
03/12/2011 How do you become a partner? Email partner@twitter.com or rsarver@twitter.com Open
03/12/2011 We want to put out there what the best possible experience for Twitter users, what developers choose from that is up to them. Open
03/12/2011 GigaOm: Critics have accused Twitter of “nuking” the developers and services that helped it achieve its early growth in its drive to monetize its network Open
03/12/2011 GigaOm: anyone who is still under the impression that Twitter is the friendly, touchy-feely company that co-founder Evan Williams used to run — the one that admitted it “screwed up” relations with developers by moving too quickly — is living in a dream world Open
03/12/2011 GigaOm: Without the help of third-party apps like Tweetie and Tweetdeck, the company likely would not have been nearly as successful at building the network (and a ready-made client like Tweetie certainly wouldn’t have been sitting there waiting to be acquired). Open
03/12/2011 GigaOm: The Twitter ecosystem didn’t just build demand for the network — it also helped build and distribute the behavior that now makes Twitter so valuable: the @ mentions, the direct messages, re-Tweets and so on, none of which were Twitter’s idea originally. That created a huge amount of goodwill, and led to the (apparently mistaken) idea of an ecosystem Open
03/13/2011 Sweeping changes made by Twitter to the Twitter API ToS (Terms of Service) Open
03/13/2011 In one fell swoop, Twitter’s platform lead Ryan Sarver outlawed all new Twitter clients Open
03/13/2011 Twitter introduces #dickbar Open
03/14/2011 572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011. Open
03/14/2011 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month. Open
03/14/2011 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year. Open
03/14/2011 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month. Open
03/14/2011 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 Open
03/14/2011 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day Open
03/15/2011 Twitter allows users to turn on and enforce SSL at Twitter.com Open
03/16/2011 Experiencing elevated error rates Open
03/17/2011 Timelines Delayed Open
03/21/2011 Twitter is migrating to their new data center Open
03/21/2011 Twitter turns 5 Open
03/22/2011 Twitter adds Content Security Policy, an extra layer of security for Firefox 4 users when accessing mobile.twitter.com to defend against cross site scripting (XSS) attacks Open
03/23/2011 When Tap11 first started pulling in the firehose, he says, it was 90 million tweets a day — now it is up to 140 million or about 1,600 tweets per second Open
03/23/2011 GigaOm: The Tap11 co-founder says that most companies want to do three things with the data the company pulls in: they want to listen to conversations about their brands or products and find the most influential people; they want insights into the performance of tweets — retweets, replies, and so on — and then they want details on how many people are responding to their updates and when Open
03/25/2011 Experiencing delays in sms and facebook deliveries Open
03/25/2011 Tweet Button share flow has some UI improvements and now supports mobile smart phones. Open
03/25/2011 The trends endpoints on search.twitter.com are being turned off as they exist on api.twitter.com instead Open
03/25/2011 The trends endpoints on search.twitter.com are being turned off as they exist on api.twitter.com instead Open
03/25/2011 Experiencing delays with Tweet delivery Open
03/30/2011 Account settings temporarily unavailable Open
03/30/2011 Elevated error rate Open
Apr 2011
04/01/2011 Elevated error rates Open
04/04/2011 Twitter announces partnership with DataSift to resyndicate tweets for analytics and data analysis Open
04/04/2011 Techcrunch: Twitter and realtime data curation service Mediasift have just announced a data resell partnership here at the Data 2.0 Conference at the Mission Bay Conference Center Open
04/04/2011 Techcrunch: This move is similar to when Twitter partnered with realtime data provider Gnip to make parts of Twitter’s firehose commercially available five months ago, except Gnip focuses on bulk instead of vertical searches Open
04/04/2011 Techcrunch: According to Sarver, Mediasift will “serve the analytics market we can’t serve ourselves.” “We’re trying to commoditize data processing,” said founder Nick Halstead about offering developers the ability to use Mediasift’s DataSift in order to analyze the Twitter firehose. Open
04/04/2011 DataSift’s platform provides developers with alerts, analytics and a realtime API through a drag and drop graphical interface Open
04/05/2011 Experiencing problems displaying home timelines Open
04/05/2011 Elevated error rate Open
04/06/2011 Some users are reporting blank screens Open
04/06/2011 Twitter Search is Now 3x Faster Open
04/18/2011 According to a report in the Wall Street Journal  on Monday, Twitter is in “advanced talks” to buy TweetDeck Open
04/18/2011 As we’ve written a number of times, the information network — which has been going through some executive turmoil recently — has had a fairly tense relationship with third-party developers who use its API to create apps and services. It started with the acquisition of Tweetie last year, which triggered a debate over whether Twitter was deliberately crushing or dismantling its ecosystem. (Former CEO Evan Williams later admitted that the company “screwed up.”) Those kinds of concerns returned to the forefront for many over the past couple of months, as Twitter ratcheted down the terms for use of its API and took a number of other steps to enforce its vision. Open
04/18/2011 crackdown on UberMedia, a well-funded startup founded by veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur Bill Gross, which has had a tumultuous relationship with Twitter despite its relatively short lifespan — and which is rumored to be working on a competing Twitter-style information network. One of Gross’s run-ins with Twitter came last year: Just days after UberMedia announced a plan to roll out an advertising platform based around tweets, Twitter announced its own similar plans, and made it clear that it would not look kindly on other apps running their own ad programs. (Coincidentally or not, Tweetdeck is one of the few apps approved to run Twitter’s ads.) Open
04/18/2011 A Tweetdeck buy would also send a message to those third-party apps and services that have had a fractured relationship with the network: Try hard enough and you might get acquired. Although Twitter steered developers away from coming out with new clients in its recent statements about its API, a Tweetdeck deal — and the partnerships the network has recently announced with other Twitter-related tools such as Sulia and also with DataSift — would be a tangible sign Twitter is prepared to invest in the ecosystem, not just bulldoze it or put up fences around it. Open
04/22/2011 Twitter announces new, furture headquarters at Market Square in San Francisco Open
04/26/2011 Twitter is available in Russian and Turkish Open
04/28/2011 Twitter updates the OAuth Screens and Flow Open
04/30/2011 Elevated Error Rates Open
May 2011
05/08/2011 TweetDeck, the leading third party Twitter client, has been acquired by Twitter Open
05/09/2011 Firehose is hard to come by. More likely to get access by @Gnip Open
05/10/2011 Site stability issues Open
05/11/2011 Twitter rolls out a new mobile version of Twitter.com Open
05/11/2011 New version of Twitter.com uses HTML5 Open
05/13/2011 Experiencing site stability issues Open
05/16/2011 HTTPS profile and profile background image URLs are being added to user objects Open
05/16/2011 Techcrunch: Announces a firehose partnership between Twitter and NTT DOCOMO Open
05/17/2011 Twitter educates users about more granular control over their oAuth settings Open
05/18/2011 Temporary delay in following/unfollowing Open
05/18/2011 Twitter outlines the new OAuth screens that give users greater transparency about the level of access applications have to their accounts Open
05/19/2011 Twitter releases an update to Kiji, a Ruby runtime Open
05/25/2011 Some users are experiencing empty timelines Open
05/25/2011 Twitter acquires Tweetdeck Open
05/25/2011 Tweetdeck Open
05/27/2011 Twitter is seeing around 155,000,000 tweets per day Open
05/31/2011 Twitter introduces the follow button Open
05/31/2011 Twitter launches a personalized search experience to help users find the most relevant Tweets, images, and videos Open
Jun 2011
06/01/2011 Twitter rolls out new version of Twitter Search Open
06/01/2011 Twitter introduces the ability upload a photo and attach to a tweet Open
06/01/2011 Twitter acquires AdGrok Open
06/02/2011 First public tweets with photos Open
06/06/2011 Twitter is built into iOS 5 Open
06/07/2011 Twitter is now available in Brazilian Portuguese. Open
06/08/2011 No Chirp This Year, So Twitter Developers Holding Their Own Summit Open
06/11/2011 Twitter introduces automatic URL shortening on Twitter.com Open
06/15/2011 Twitter launched a YouTube channel just for its API developers Open
06/20/2011 Tweet delivery delay Open
06/22/2011 The follow button widget is currently off line Open
06/22/2011 Twitter invites engineers to Twitter HQ for an engineering open house Open
06/24/2011 Intermittent errors Open
06/24/2011 API is temporarily rate-limited to 175 Open
06/26/2011 Tweet delivery delays for streaming clients Open
06/28/2011 Twitter enforces new permission level enforcement Open
06/28/2011 Twitter solicits feedback from the ecosystem about the Twitter + iOS integration Open
06/30/2011 200 million Tweets per day are sent through Twitter Open
Jul 2011
07/01/2011 Twitter showcases the Mac UI toolkit Open
07/02/2011 Tweet Delivery Delay Open
07/05/2011 GigaOm: Twitter announced Tuesday morning it has acquired BackType Open
07/05/2011 GigaOm: As part of the deal, BackType has already stopped taking on new users for its BackTweets product, which helps publishers track how their Tweets covert to web traffic and sales Open
07/07/2011 Many users are receiving incorrect Rate Limit Exceeded errors through the Twitter API. We are investigating the cause and will update when it is resolved. Open
07/11/2011 Gigaom: Millions of people see Twitter as simply a fun and trendy pastime. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that underneath the company’s hood, the data streamed through the microblogging service could be worth some big bucks. And while Twitter is obviously keen to keep a lot of that money to itself, for now it seems content to share at least some of its big data monetization opportunities with a small, select group of startups. Open
07/11/2011 DataSift, one of only two companies authorized to re-syndicate Twitter’s content using its “firehose,” announced a $6 million venture capital funding round on Monday. In a press release, DataSift said it plans to use the money to beef up its sales and support teams “to service the surge in demand the company is seeing for providing its real-time feed.” Open
07/11/2011 The new funding round was co-led by IA Ventures and GRP Partners. According to GRP Partners’ Mark Suster, Twitter “encouraged” his firm’s investment in DataSift. The press release also quotes Twitter CEO Dick Costolo saying, “We’re delighted to see DataSift receive this funding, which is indicative of the value the venture community sees in the Twitter ecosystem as a whole.” Open
07/11/2011 Twitter acquires BackType Open
07/11/2011 Twitter has over one million registered apps Open
07/11/2011 Twitter has 750,000 developers around the world Open
07/11/2011 A new Twitter app is registered every 1.5 seconds Open
07/11/2011 Since December 2010, more than $500 million has been invested in ecosystem companies Open
07/11/2011 Twitter has spent more than a billion dollars has been paid out in acquisitions Open
07/11/2011 Twitter introduces a new Twitter Developer site Open
07/11/2011 Anyone in the ecosystem can start building with Twitter Open
07/11/2011 Developers can connect directly with Twitter team members Open
07/11/2011 Application developers play a fundamental role in helping people get the best out of Twitter Open
07/11/2011 Mass Relevance Open
07/11/2011 Trendrr Open
07/11/2011 Datasift Open
07/11/2011 Poptweets Open
07/13/2011 Twitter releases a new version of Twitter for Android Open
07/18/2011 Tweet delivery delay Open
07/22/2011 Issue with Following, Unfollowing and Timelines Open
07/27/2011 Twitter issues some recommendations for keeping Twitter accounts safe Open
Aug 2011
08/01/2011 Twitter launches in Dutch and Indonesian languages Open
08/01/2011 Twitter generates over 200 million Tweets per day Open
08/01/2011 Twitter has over one million registerred applications Open
08/01/2011 Twitter has over 600 employees Open
08/01/2011 Twitter receives a significant round of funding led by venture firm DST Global Open
08/03/2011 Tweet Delivery Delay Open
08/04/2011 Twitter announces the forthcoming release of Storm, a real time stream processsing platform from their Backtype acquisition Open
08/06/2011 Tweet Delivery Delay Open
08/08/2011 Twitter acquires BagCheck Open
08/15/2011 Twitter releases the Photo UPload API Open
08/15/2011 Twitter releases the Photo UPload API Open
08/16/2011 Development Site Issue Open
08/17/2011 Tweet Delivery Delay Open
08/19/2011 Twitter launches Bootstrap Open
08/23/2011 Tweet Delivery Delay Open
08/31/2011 Issue with Mentions and DM Open
08/31/2011 Streaming API turning SSL only in 30 days Open
Sep 2011
09/01/2011 As Twitter developers, you are a fundamental part of our DNA Open
09/01/2011 Our ongoing commitment is to give you the structure, tools, resources, and support you need to build your businesses as you leverage the power of Twitter. Open
09/01/2011 Open
09/01/2011 @jack as for feedback on Twitter API and developer ecosystem Open
09/02/2011 Twitter basically owes its scale and growth to its developer ecosystem. Open
09/02/2011 Twitter developers saved Twitter by adding features like mobile apps, photos and link shortening Twitter couldn't add on its own. Open
09/02/2011 Then Twitter realized that it needed to control its experience and began taking over those niches developers had built businesses on. Twitter now has its own link-shortening, image service and mobile apps. And it's not above playing hardball to keep control of its ecosystem.  Open
09/02/2011 The broader question remains: how can Twitter developers make money? How can Twitter make money from that? Open
09/06/2011 User Streams and Site Streams are having performance issues Open
09/08/2011 100 million active Twitter users worldwide Open
09/09/2011 Users can’t fetch all their old content. Open
09/09/2011 You can’t fetch all the replies to a tweet. Open
09/12/2011 Twitter hires @kurrik as a developer advocate Open
09/13/2011 Twitter introduces Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that helps website owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites Open
09/14/2011 Tweet Delivery Delay Open
09/14/2011 Twitter is now available in Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Hindi, Filipino and Malay Open
09/14/2011 Twitter now fully supports 17 languages Open
09/14/2011 Twitter showcases the performance of the Twitter’s HTML5 mobile application Open
09/15/2011 Twitter announces SSL support for our Tweet and Follow Buttons Open
09/19/2011 Twitter Widget May Not Be Working Properly Open
09/19/2011 Twitter introduces SocialFlow, DataMinr, Crowdbooster, Jess3, and Crimson Hexagon to 50 venture capitalists at Twitter Headquarters Open
09/21/2011 Twitter has acquired Julpan Open
09/23/2011 Direct Message IDs become 64-bit Snowflake IDs Open
09/23/2011 Twitter announces developer teatime in London Open
09/23/2011 Twitter announces developer teatime in New York Open
09/26/2011 Several Trends API endpoints are deprecated Open
09/28/2011 Streaming API is SSL only Open
Oct 2011
10/01/2011 Economist: Twitter would like to turn its popularity into money, but rather than beefing up its own infrastructure, it plans to outsource the task of distributing and selling its data to DataSift and Gnip Open
10/01/2011 The Economist: Both DataSift and Gnip are striving to be “data platforms”. They collect and standardise information from all kinds of social-media services—not only Twitter, but also Facebook, YouTube and others. Both Gnip and DataSift have built robust networks which can cope with massive amounts of data in real time. And both are enforcing licensing rules: for instance, that a stream of tweets can be analysed but not republished. Open
10/01/2011 The Economist: Gnip charges $33,000 a month for a feed of half of all tweets. Open
10/01/2011 Yet growth in this market could be held back—by privacy concerns. Most people think that tweets are only up to 140 characters long. But those who sip from Twitter’s fire hose can get much more information, including a sender’s location, the biography on his profile page and how many people have subscribed to his messages (see blog post on the map of a tweet). Most of this information is freely available on Twitter’s website. But if users realise how their data are used, they may clam up. Open
10/04/2011 Twitter joins the Java Community Process (JCP) and OpenJDK project Open
10/05/2011 We love hearing from developers about what’s working, what’s not and what more we can do to support ecosystem growth Open
10/05/2011 Twitter will strive to give you a minimum of 30 days advance notice before sunsetting something Open
10/05/2011 Rate limits are 350 requests per user (oauth_token) per hour if you’re making authenticated calls and 150 per hour against the calling IP address for unauthenticated calls Open
10/05/2011 You told us you’d like to hear more detail about specific opportunities for developers, and which areas Twitter plans to invest in internally. We aim to be as transparent as possible, so you can make informed decisions as you develop applications Open
10/05/2011 We aim to be as transparent as possible, so you can make informed decisions as you develop applications. Open
10/05/2011 Twitter launches the Twitter Platform Issue Tracker, a canonical place to host, track and report when issues are resolved Open
10/10/2011 All URLs regardless of their length are now automatically wrapped with t.co Open
10/10/2011 There’s a lot going on in the ecosystem and we’d like to take this chance to share the highlights with you – including the latest developments with the platform, areas of opportunity that we’re seeing, and a heavy focus on the iOS 5 Twitter integration for developers. We’ll also be holding a Q&A session with members of the platform team, plus time to hang out with each other Open
10/10/2011 Over the past 6 months or so we’ve really made a concerted effort to get out there more with developer events, to engage in dialogue, answer questions etc Open
10/10/2011 I asked Ryan for example of some of his favorite innovations within the Twitter developer community. He first pointed to New York based Dataminr, which is a “financial services data platform for event-detection and trend analysis in social media”. It’s essentially a warning system for the financial markets. “Dataminr has a fairly small team, but their entire goal is to look at social signals, and these little blips and variants that may be an indicator of something that might affect the markets”, says Ryan. “Whilst they’re focusing on the financial sector, I think the same concept could be applied elsewhere”. Open
10/10/2011 “The industry’s first and only social media optimization technology that uses real-time data — including the Twitter and bitly firehoses — to help publishers, retailers, and brands earn maximum potential engagement on Twitter. Through the SocialFlow AttentionScore™ algorithm, SocialFlow dynamically publishes the best message at the best time to ensure its clients get the maximum amount of engagement from their Followers”. Open
10/10/2011 “Between January and June this year, the developer ecosystem saw half-a-billion dollar investment coming in”, says Ryan. So that means third-party app developers that use Twitter’s data have been raking it in on the back of Twitter, “but what was really cool over that same period, there was over a billion dollars worth of exits”, he continued. Open
10/10/2011 For starters, Salesforce acquired Radian6 for $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock, whilst Koxmix was later acquired by Walmart for what was rumored to be over $300m. “These aren’t the only metrics we track”, says Ryan. “But it is indicative of a healthy and viable ecosystem”. Open
10/10/2011 Speaking of the ecosystem, earlier this year you may remember that Twitter fell under a fair bit of criticism for the way it was trying to curb third-party client apps. Sarver said at the time that developers shouldn’t create new apps “that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” Open
10/10/2011 “The thing is, if you still want to build a client, we’re not going to stop you”, says Ryan. “We just feel that if you’re going to put time and effort into the Twitter ecosystem, there’s a lot better places to be doing it. I think three weeks after we made that original statement, Radian6 got acquired for $300m. There are great businesses to be built on top of Twitter, we’re trying to help people see that opportunity”. Open
10/12/2011 Twitter is now fully integrated into Apple’s new iOS 5 mobile operating system Open
10/13/2011 Photo Upload Issue Open
10/14/2011 Seeing Empty Timelines Open
10/15/2011 Tweet Delivery Delay Open
10/17/2011 Background Image Issue Open
10/20/2011 Twitter announces developer teatimes in Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles Open
10/26/2011 Seeing Empty Timelines Open
10/26/2011 Twitter announces developer teatimes in Seoul and Tokyo Open
Nov 2011
11/04/2011 Twitter creates a generate OAuth signature button that is integrated into REST API documentation Open
11/07/2011 Techrunch: Twitter has named Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon as firehose partners Open
11/07/2011 Techcrunch: Partnering with Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon will act as intermediaries between the micro-blogging platform and companies that want to display its content elsewhere. Open
11/07/2011 Twitter’s firehose includes 230 million tweets a day and over 1.5 billion a week Open
11/07/2011 Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon were already platform partners, but the new agreements will allow them to re-syndicate tweets or analyze their content in exchange for a fee without fear of suspension. Open
11/11/2011 @claylo: Is there a better case of a platform company telling its devs to fuck off than today's @twitterapi update? Or is this the textbook example? Open
11/14/2011 Twitter Site Issue Open
11/14/2011 Twitter shocases SpiderDuck, a service at Twitter that fetches all URLs shared in Tweets in real-time, parses the downloaded content to extract metadata of interest and makes that metadata available for other Twitter services to consume within seconds. Open
11/16/2011 Techcrunch announces the launch of big data business intelligence and analysis platform DataSift Open
11/29/2011 High Scalability: DataSift has bought multi-year re-syndication rights from Twitter, which grants them access to the full Twitter firehose with the ability resell subsets of it to other parties, which could be anyone, but the primary target is of course businesses. Open
11/29/2011 High Scalability: You can’t get the entire Twitter firehose. If you did it would cost 10 cents per 1000 tweets. The firehose is at 250 million tweets a day. That’s 25K a day in licensing costs.  Open
11/29/2011 High Scalability: DataSift has bought multi-year re-syndication rights from Twitter, which grants them access to the full Twitter firehose with the ability resell subsets of it to other parties, which could be anyone, but the primary target is of course businesses. Open
11/29/2011 Datasift: Current Peak Delivery of 120,000 Tweets Per Second (260Mbit bandwidth)  Open
11/29/2011 Datasift: 1TB of augmented (includes gender, sentiment, etc) data transits the platform daily  Open
11/29/2011 Datasift: The idea is to create a whole new slew of applications that you couldn't with Twitter’s API Open
11/30/2011 Twitter releases the Twitter Framework for iOS Open
11/30/2011 Twitter updates both the Tweet and Follow Buttons Open
Dec 2011
12/06/2011 Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement on MTV's Video Music Awards in August broke the record for the highest TPS spike of all time: nearly 9,000 Tweets per second Open
12/08/2011 Twitter introduces the statuses/oembed endpoint Open
12/08/2011 Twitter introduces embeddable Tweets Open
12/08/2011 Twitter introduces the #hashtag button, to tell users about a conversation Open
12/08/2011 Twitter introduces the @mention button to encourage visitors to Tweet to your account Open
12/09/2011 Twitter’s Director of Platform Ryan Sarver took the stage at LeWeb in Paris Open
12/09/2011 Twitter Want to Focus on Simplicity Open
12/14/2011 Twitter Site Issue Open
12/16/2011 Twitter launches new HTML version of Tweedeck Open
12/20/2011 Twitter open sources TextSecure, which provides support for encrypted texts on Android devices Open
12/20/2011 Twitter acquisitions of Whisper Systems boost security Open
12/30/2011 A number of high-profile departures led to rumors of management problems. From key engineering talent like Mike Abbott, Evan Weaver and Tweetie creator Loren Brichter, to VP of Consumer Marketing, Pam Kramer, Media Partnerships team member Robin Sloan and head of communications Sean Garrett, it was an exodus that got tongues wagging as talk of turf wars and personality conflicts did the rounds. Open
12/30/2011 In February, Twitter suspended UberTwitter and Twidroyd, two third-party apps from UberMedia, due to privacy problem which may have seen DMs made public and a trademark violation. Open
12/30/2011 In March, Twitter dropped a bomb – it didn’t want developers to build Twitter clients any more. Given that Twitter’s scale was partly achieved by support from third-party apps, this was met with some anger by the development community. However, Ryan Sarver of the company’s platform and API team explained that apps were “the core area” it was investing in, and “There are much bigger, better opportunities within the ecosystem.” Open
12/30/2011 Twitter ads are pricey – it was reported in June that Twitter put a Promoted Trend at $120,000 per day Open
12/30/2011 Dick Costolo said that 80% of advertisers came back to book repeat slots. Open
12/31/2011 Twitter Site Issue Open
2012
Jan 2012
01/04/2012 Streaming API Disruption Open
01/05/2012 With the new version of Twitter.com, Twitter launches easier embeddable Tweets for copying and pasting into other websites. Open
01/06/2012 400,000 volunteers contribute to Twitter Translation Center, which takes a crowd-sourced approach to making Twitter available in 21 new languages Open
01/06/2012 Twitter available in Danish Open
01/06/2012 Twitter available in Finnish Open
01/06/2012 Twitter available in Norwegian Open
01/06/2012 Twitter available in Polish Open
01/06/2012 Twitter available in Swedish Open
01/06/2012 Twitter hold open house to showcase the achievements of the Twitter Translation Center Open
01/09/2012 Twitter announces developer teatime in Berlin Open
01/09/2012 Twitter introduces Control Streams, a suite of APIs for querying the current status of a site stream, adding & removing users from a site stream without reconnecting, and for obtaining information about the followings of specific users on a specific site stream Open
01/10/2012 Twitter announces a new pilot program for distributing Verified Account @handles and public profile metadata to developers, media and content services, and consumer device manufacturers Open
01/11/2012 Twitter open sources, Cascading a Scala API for Cascading, a thin Java library and API that sits on top of Apache Hadoop's MapReduce layer Open
01/13/2012 Techcrunch: Twitter will not renew firehose deal with Google Open
01/13/2012 John Battelle: The politics surrounding data access make it very complicated for anyone to offer comprehensive personalized search Open
01/19/2012 The Twitter Open Source Program Office is hosting an open source summit in celebration of the upcoming release of Twitter Bootstrap 2 Open
01/19/2012 Twitter acquires Summify Open
01/22/2012 Twitter site issue Open
01/22/2012 “We definitely see social as just one part of what people do on Twitter,” Dorsey said. “We think of it as an information utility and a communications network.” Open
01/24/2012 Twitter Acquires Dasient Open
01/26/2012 Twitter adds two new data attributes that hold information when content is witheld in certain countries Open
01/31/2012 Twitter launches Bootstrap 2.0 Open
Feb 2012
02/01/2012 Twitter makes API responses match the request Content-Type Open
02/06/2012 Gzip is enabled for stream.twitter.com Open
02/08/2012 Twitter announces developer teatimes in Toronto, Dublin, and Amsterdam Open
02/08/2012 Twitter holds an open house at their offices in NYC Open
02/09/2012 Twitter SMS now available for satellite providers Open
02/13/2012 HTTPS will be on by default for all users, whenever you sign in to Twitter.com. If you prefer not use it, you can turn it off on your Account Settings page Open
02/14/2012 Photo Upload Issue Open
02/14/2012 The Streaming API now supports gzip compression Open
02/16/2012 In December, we launched a new version of Twitter. It’s been available for mobile phones, via the mobile web, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, and we’ve been rolling it out steadily to Twitter.com Open
02/17/2012 Acquired by Twitter, Summify Cofounder Shares Lessons Learned Open
02/17/2012 Twitter partners with American Express to make it easy for small business owners to advertise on Twitter Open
02/20/2012 Techcrunch: Yandex now has access to the Twitter firehose Open
02/21/2012 New versions of both Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android are now available Open
02/21/2012 Twitter provides some simple strategies for smooth animation on the iPhone Open
02/22/2012 Twitter open sources Twemproxy, a fast, light-weight proxy for the memcached protocol Open
02/28/2012 Promoted Accounts are now in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android Open
Mar 2012
03/02/2012 Twitter talks about scalding an, in-house MapReduce framework that they recently open sourced Open
03/06/2012 Twitter deprecates all unversioned API endpoints Open
03/06/2012 Twitter launches in four new languages: Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu Open
03/06/2012 Thirteen thousand volunteers around the globe immediately got to work, translating and localizing Twitter.com into the four new languages languages Open
03/08/2012 Twitter open sources Cassovary, a big graph-processing library for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) written in Scala Open
03/12/2012 Twitter acquires Posterous Open
03/13/2012 Twitter ecosystem hits more than 1.5 million registered apps Open
03/22/2012 Twitter holds a security open house at their offices Open
03/27/2012 Issues resolving t.co links into Tweet entities Open
03/29/2012 Issue with Display of Sidebar and Expansion of Tweets Open
03/30/2012 TweetDeck is currently down Open
Apr 2012
04/02/2012 Gzip is now enabled on User Streams Open
04/05/2012 Search and Timeline Issue Open
04/05/2012 Twitter has 140 million active users Open
04/05/2012 Twitter has 340 million Tweets each day Open
04/05/2012 Twitter files suit in federal court in San Francisco against five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers Open
04/07/2012 Photo Upload Issue Open
04/09/2012 MediaBistro: Twitter has granted full access to its firehose to the social media data mining company Dataminr Open
04/09/2012 Twitter shares details of how they use MySQL Open
04/12/2012 Issue where devs cannot create new applications properly Open
04/12/2012 TWitter launches a new Frequently Asked Questions section Open
04/12/2012 Gnip and DataSift are set up to offer access to the full Twitter Firehose Open
04/16/2012 Twitter acquires Hostpots.io Open
04/17/2012 TweetDeck Log In Issue Open
04/17/2012 Twitter publishes the Innovator's Patent Agreement, a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers Open
04/17/2012 Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. Open
04/17/2012 Twitter will implement the Innovators Patent Agreement later this year, and it will apply to all patents issued to our engineers, both past and present Open
04/18/2012 Profile Settings Issue Open
04/18/2012 Profile Image Upload Issue Open
04/19/2012 Twitter becomes an official sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Open
04/22/2012 Twitter releases a new version of TweetDeck Open
04/25/2012 The Streaming Enpoint DNS entries have changed Open
04/26/2012 New versions of TWitter for iPhone in the App Store and for Android in Google Play. Open
04/26/2012 Twitter is updating its SSL certificates for api.twitter.com Open
04/27/2012 Twitter launches 8 case studies on implementations by Twitter partners Zappos, Etsy, Pocket Gems, Reuters, ESPN, Esri, Tiny Prints and Feeding America Open
04/30/2012 Twitter announces developer teatime in Paris, France Open
May 2012
05/01/2012 Twitter Site Issue Open
05/02/2012 Twitter participates in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program for the first time Open
05/03/2012 Twitter launches documentation that is designed like a Audubon field guide Open
05/05/2012 Twitter Site Issue Open
05/07/2012 Some apps are getting a 403 Forbidden when uploading images Open
05/07/2012 Twitter provides a developer resource for working with timelines Open
05/07/2012 Update Twitter for mobile web (mobile.twitter.com) in an effort to give every person on the planet a consistent Twitter experience Open
05/08/2012 Twitter is investigating after 55,000 account details — including username and password combinations — were published online. Open
05/09/2012 Some users may be experiencing an issue when uploading a profile Open
05/09/2012 Twitter announces developer teatimes in Nairobi, Manila, Buenos Aires and Singapore Open
05/10/2012 Twitter Buys Personalized Email Marketer RestEngine To Deliver Best Tweet Digests Open
05/10/2012 Twitter talks about incubating open source jobs platform Mesos, with Apache Open
05/11/2012 Judge rules that the user, Malcolm Harris, lost ownership of his tweets once he posted them online, and therefore had no legal standing to challenge the subpoena. Open
05/12/2012 Twitter talks about be able to identify and get visibility into user traffic Open
05/15/2012 Twitter updates the documentation for the Streaming API Open
05/16/2012 Twitter open sources Ambrose, a tool which helps authors of large-scale data workflows keep track of the overall status of a workflow and visualize its progress Open
05/17/2012 Twitter updates the rules of the road to require developers to respect Do Not Follow and not track cookies of those who turn off Open
05/17/2012 Twitter enables the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser that enables people to opt-out of cookies that collect personal information and any third-party cookies, including those used for advertising Open
05/18/2012 New York Times article making arguement that users trust Twitter more than Facebook when it comes to date Open
05/20/2012 Some users are experiencing issues when uploading a photo Open
05/21/2012 Twitter has been experiencing several incidences of poor site performance and a high number of errors due to one of our internal sub-networks being over-capacity Open
05/21/2012 Twitter usage doubled in the past year Open
05/22/2012 Working to resolve issues with logging in and using app management tools Open
05/22/2012 Globe and Mail: Providing easy-to-use access to trillions of tweets isn't the simplest task Open
05/22/2012 Globe and Mail: Now, there's nothing unethical about Twitter selling access to an archive of statements that users freely made in public Open
05/22/2012 Globe and Mail: Twitter is playing by the terms it laid down for users when they signed up. Open
05/22/2012 Globe and Mail: Twitter is giving big corporate spenders access to writing that users created, but can't even see themselves Open
05/22/2012 Globe and Mail: Twitter's users walked into this line of publishing on the premise that the data would be public. Now, having pumped the service full of data, that data has effectively been made private, accessible only to those with a corporate analytics budget. Open
05/22/2012 Globe and Mail: By locking users out of their own data, Twitter has managed a rare feat: making Facebook look good Open
05/24/2012 Twitter shutters Summify service Open
05/24/2012 Some users may be experiencing an issue with their @mentions Open
05/27/2012 Twitter buys Dasient, ups its security Open
05/28/2012 The API rate-limit has been restored to 175 Open
05/28/2012 Current stance on whitelisting Open
05/28/2012 Current Rate Limits Page Open
05/28/2012 Unauthenticated calls are permitted 150 requests per hour. Unauthenticated calls are measured against the public facing IP of the server or device making the request. Open
05/28/2012 OAuth calls are permitted 350 requests per hour and are measured against the oauth_token used in the request. Open
05/29/2012 The Guidelines and terms section at https://dev.twitter.com/docs are a good start, but there seems to be a grey zone between "using the API to get a few tweets" and "full firehose access". Open
05/29/2012 Twitter's communications to developers has been improving in the last couple months. Open
05/29/2012 The most recent additions, like the photo APIs and the t.co stuff, have been well communicated, with a fair amount of advance knowledge. Open
05/29/2012 Officially sanctioned, supported, and maintained libraries for popular languages (ruby, php, python, etc.) would be helpful. Open
05/29/2012 Current API limitations are more or less teasers. But not enough for even entry level analyze of tweeters in a reasonable amount of time. Open
05/29/2012 How about giving all developers equal access to the api? I'm talking about equal between devs, not between Twitter and devs. That would be a fantastic start, and would really help us to feel like 'a fundamental part of the Twitter DNA'. A second equally important step would be to give devs fair warning if they are not complying with the TOS and some reasonable period to fix/resolve the problem. Open
05/29/2012 Increased API limits for accounts with a large number of followers. Open
05/29/2012 Some better options for paid API access. The current providers you are working on the fire-hose with have not been reliable enough in my trails. Open
05/29/2012 Twitter used to promote third-party apps on the home page (e.g. Twittervision). Nowadays, the promo box seems to only include first-party services. It would be cool if you started highlighting some of your favorite thrid-party apps again. Open
Jun 2012
06/03/2012 Twitter to expect US$1B in sales by 2014 Open
06/08/2012 Twitter unveils new partnership with the NASCAR auto-racing circuit Open
06/08/2012 Twitter CEO: some days, mobile ads outsell web ads Open
06/11/2012 Twitter airs its first television commercial Open
06/12/2012 GigaOm: Why traditional media should be afraid of Twitter Open
06/14/2012 How Engineers Disappear Into the Twitter Collective Open
06/21/2012 Twitter is down for some time Open
06/22/2012 Twitter: We're so focused on the consumer market...we want the ecosystem to serve the enterprise market Open
06/27/2012 Mobile Backend as a Service platform Buddy showcases Twitter and Facebook integration approaches Open
06/29/2012 Ecosystem developers quits Twitter after second startup of his gets cut-off Open
06/29/2012 We’ve already begun to more thoroughly enforce our Developer Rules of the Road with partners, for example with branding, and in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used Open
06/30/2012 Twitter issues warning to developers: Now, we do it our way Open
06/30/2012 Ultimately, the company could ruin the experience that made Twitter so compelling in the first place, in the same way that MySpace and Digg did Open
Jul 2012
07/01/2012 Rather than closing the APIs down, there is a way for Twitter to benefit massively by making them even more open, but with a built-in monetization strategy Open
07/01/2012 @davewiner: The mistake we all made with Twitter, me too, was to think a corporate API could act like an open protocol Open
07/01/2012 It’s not “We The People” anymore, it’s “We The Product” and if we all banded together, We The Product could exert some influence over those who are monetizing us Open
07/01/2012 Despite promises of being open, and promises that “you own your data,” in fact, anyone who has contributed any data to Twitter is currently a hostage: Twitter has your data and you can’t have it Open
07/01/2012 The problem here is that Twitter’s ad people are thinking in early 2000′s paradigms —  they are thinking about display ads on websites and apps. But they should be thinking of ads that appear INSIDE streams of content in Twitter Open
07/02/2012 Twitter unveils new transparency report to show government requests for information and DMCA takedown requests Open
07/03/2012 An ecosystem platform enables your business to build an environment enabling customer relationship monetization, distribution channel expansion, and maintaining customer relationship ownership. The ecosystem platform goes beyond data APIs Open
07/03/2012 Twitter won't kill the API Open
07/03/2012 Twitter faces the same dilemma as the New York Times Open
Sep 2012
09/05/2012 Twitter Drops support for RSS Open
09/09/2012 Twitter rolls out version 1.1 of the Twitter API Open
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